Two war years in Constantinople; sketches of German and Young Turkish ethics and politics

TWO WA

Li

OJorttcU Bnioetaitg SIthrarij

BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE

SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND

THE GIFT OF

HENRY W. SAGE

1891

Cornell University Library
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Two war years in Constantinople:

3 1924 027 963 747

The original of tliis book is in
tine Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.

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TWO WAR YEARS IN
CONSTANTINOPLE

TWO WAR YEARS IN
CONSTANTINOPLE

Sketches of German and Young
Turkish Ethics and Politics

DR. HARRY STUERMER

Late Correspondent of the Kolnische Zeitung in Constantinople (1915-16)

Translated from the German by E. ALLEN
and the Author

HODDER AND STOUGHTON

LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO

MCMXVII

I- ',

10

DECLARATION

Furthermore, he has been actuated by no
personal motives in thus giving pubhc ex-
pression to his experiences and opinions, for
he has no personal grievance, either material
or moral, against any person whatsoever.

Gbiteya,

June 1917.

PREFACE

While the author of this work was waiting
on the frontier of Switzerland for final
permission from the German authorities to
enter that country, Germany committed
her second great crime, her first having
completely missed its mark. She had be-
gun to realise that she was beaten in the
great conflict which she had so wantonly
provoked with her characteristic over-con-
fidence in the power of her own militarism
and disdainful undervaluation of the morale
and general capacities of her enemies. In
final renunciation of any last remnants of
humanity in her methods, she was now
making a dying effort to help her already
lost cause by a ruthless extension of her
policy of piracy at sea and a gratification of
all her brutal instincts in complete violation
of the rights of neutral countries.

11

IS PREFACE

It is therefore with all the more inward
conviction, with all the more urgent moral
persuasion, that the author makes use of
the rare opportunity offered him by residence
in Switzerland to range himself boldly on
the side of truth and show that there are
still Germans who find it impossible to
condone even tacitly the moral transgression
and political stupidity of their own and an
allied Government. That is the sole purpose
of this publication.

Regardless of the consequences, he holds
it to be his duty and his privilege, just
because he is a German, to make a frank
statement, from the point of view of
human civilisation, of what have become his
convictions from personal observations made
in the course of six months of actual warfare
and practically two years of subsequent
journalistic activity. He spent the time
from Spring 1915 to Christmas 1916 in
Turkey, and will of course only deal with
what he knows from personal observation.
The following essays are of the nature merely
of sketches and make no claim whatever to
completeness.

PREFACE IS

With regard to purely German politics
and ethics, therefore, the author will confine
himself to a few indiqations and impressions
of a personal kind, but he cannot forget the
role Germany has played in Turkey as an
ally of the present Young Turkish Govern-
ment, nor can he ignore Germany's re-
sponsibility for the atrocities committed by
them. The author publishes his impressions
with a perfectly clear conscience, secure in
the conviction that as the representative of
a German paper he never once wrote a
single word in favour of this criminal war,
and that during his stay of more than
twenty months in Turkey he never con-
cealed his true opinions as soon as he had
definitely made up his mind what these were.

On the contrary, he was rather dangerously
candid and frank in speaking to anyone who
wanted to listen to him — so much so, that
it is almost a miracle that he ever reached
a neutral country. After the war he will
be in a position to appeal to the testimony
of dozens of people of high standing in all
walks of life that in both thought and action
a deep cleft has always divided him from

14 PREFACE

his fellow-journalists, and that he has ever
ardently longed for the moment when he
might, freely and without fear of con-
sequences, do his bit towards the enlighten-
ment of the civilised world.

May these lines, written in all sincerity
and hereby submitted to the tribunal of
public opinion, free the author at last from
the burden of silent reproach heaped on him
by a mutilated, outraged, languishing hu-
manity, of being a German among thousands
of Germans who desired this war.

Several months have passed since the
original text of the German and French
editions of this little book was written.
Baghdad was taken by British troops before
the last chapter of the German manuscript
had been completed, and since then military
operations have been more and more in
favour of the Entente. A number of im-
portant political events have occurred, such
as the Russian Revolution and the entry of
the United States of America into the war.

Further developments of Russian politics
may yet have a direct effect on the final

PREFACE 15

solution of the problems surrounding the
defeated Ottoman Empire. But the author
has preferred to maintain the original text
of his book, written early in March this year,
and to make no changes whatever in the
conclusions he had then arrived at as a
result of the fresh impressions he carried
away from Turkey.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

At the outbreak of war in Germany — The German " world-
politicians " (WeltpoUtiker) — German and English
mentality — The " place in the sun " — England's
declaration of war — German methods in Belgium
and Alsace-Lorraine — Prussian arrogance — Militaristic
journalism. ...... pp. 21-39

CHAPTER II

In Constantinople — Pro-Turkish considerations — The
dilemma of a Gallipoli correspondent — Under German
military control. . . . ... pp. 40-47

CHAPTER III

The great Armenian persecutions — ^The system of Talaat
and Enver — A denunciation of Germany as a cowardly
and conscienceless accomplice . . pp. 48—81

CHAPTER IV

The tide of war — Enver's offensive for the " liberation
of the Caucasus " — The Dardanelles Campaign ; the
fate of Constantinople twice hangs in the balance —
Nervous tension in international Pera — Bulgaria's
attitude — ^Turkish rancour against her former enemy
2 17

18 CONTENTS

— German illusions of a separate peace with Russia —
King Ferdinand's time-serving — Lack of munitions
in the Dardanelles — ^A mysterious death : a political
murder ? — The evacuation of Gallipoli — ^The Turkish
version of victory — Constantinople unrelieved — Kut-
el-Amara — Propaganda for the " Holy War " — ^A
prisoner of repute — Loyalty of Anglo-Indian ofiScers
— ^Turkish communiques and their worth — The fall of
Erzerum — Official lies — The treatment of prisoners
— Political speculation with prisoners of war — Treat-
ment of alien subjects — Stagnation and lassitude in
the summer of 1916 — ^The Greeks in Turkey — Dread
of Greek massacres — Rumania's entry — Terrible disap-
pointment — The three phases of the war for Turkey.

pp. 82-116

CHAPTER V

The economic situation — Exaggerated Entente hopes —
Hunger and suffering among the civil population —
The system of requisitioning and the semi-official
monopolists — Profiteering on the part of the Govern-
ment clique — ^Frivolity and cynicism — ^The " Djemiet "
— The delegates of the German Zentraleinkaufsgesell-
schaft (Central Purchases Commission) — A hard battle
between German and Turkish intrigue — Reform of
the coinage — Paper money and its depreciation —
The hoarding of coin— The Russian rouble the best
investment pp. 116-135

CHAPTER VI

German propaganda and ethics— The unsuccessful " Holy
War" and the German Government — "The Holy
War " a crime agamst civilisation, an illusion, a farce
—Underhand dealings— The German Embassy the
dupe of adventurers— The morality of German Press

CONTENTS 19

representatives — A trusty servant of the German
Embassy — Fine official distinctions of morality — ^The
German •onoeption of International Law pp. 136-161

CHAPTER VII

Young Turkish nationalism — One-sided abolition of capitu-
lations — Anti-foreign efforts at emancipation — Aboli-
tion of foreign languages — German simplicity — The
Turkification of commercial life — Unmistakable in
tellectual improvement as a result of the war — Trade
policy and customs tariff — National production — The
founding of new businesses in Turkey — Germany
supplanted — German starvation — Capitulations or full
European control ? — The colonisation and forcible
Turkification of Anatolia — " The properties of persons
who have been transported elsewhere " — The " Mo-
had jirs " — Greek persecutions just before the Great
War — The " discovery " of Anatolia, the nucleus of
the Ottoman Empire — Turkey finds herself at last —
Anatolian dirt and decay — The " Greater Turkey " and
the purely Turkish Turkey — Cleavage or concentra-
tion ? pp. 162-188

CHAPTER VIII

Religion and race — The Islam policy of Abdul-Hamid and
of the Young Turks — Turanism and Pan-Islamism as
political principles — Turanism and the Quadruple
Alliance — Greed and race-fanaticism — Keligious tradi-
tions and modern reforms — Reform in the law — A
modern Sheikh-ul-Islam — Reform and nationalisation
— The Armenian and Greek Patriarchates — The failure
of Pan-Islamism — The alienation of the Arabs —
Djemal Pasha's " hangman's policy " in Syria —
Djemal as a " Pro-French " — Djemal and Enver —

20 CONTENTS

Djemal and Germany — His true character — The
attempt against the Suez Canal — Djemal's murderous
work nears completion — The great Arabian and Syrian
Separatist movement — The defection of the Emir of
'•. Mecca and the great Arabian catastrophe pp. 189-228

CHAPTER IX

Anti-war and pro-Entente feelings among the Turks —
Turkish pessimism about the war — How would Abdul-
Hamid have acted ? — A war of prevention against
Russia — Russia and a neutral Turkey — The agreement
about the Dardanelles — ^A peaceful solution scorned —
Alleged criminal intentions on the part of the Entente ;
the example of Greece and Salonika — Existence or non-
existence ? — German influence — Turkey stakes on the
wrong card — The results — ^The death of Pincer Yussuf
Izzedin: murder or suicide? — ^The "gentlemen" of
the Committee .... pp. 224-275

CHAPTER X

The outlook for the future — The consequences of trusting
Germany — The Entente's death sentence on Turkey
— The social necessity for this deliverance — Anatolia,
the new Turkey after the war — Forecasts about the
Turkish race — The Turkish element in the lost
territory — Russia and Constantinople ; international
guarantees — Germany, at peace, benefits too — ^Fare-
well to the German " World - politicians " — Gferman
interests in a victorious, and in an amputated Turkey —
The German-Turkish treaty — A paradise on earth —
The Russian commercial impetus — The new Armenia
— ^Western Anatolia, the old Greek centre of civilisation
— Great Arabia and Syria — The I'econeiliation of
Germany pp. 276-299

APPENDIX pp. 301-308

CHAPTER I

At the outbreak of war in Germany — The German " world-
politicians " (Wdtpolitiker) — German and English
mentality — The " place in the sun " — England's
declaration of war — German m^ethods in Belgium
and Alsace-Lorraine — Prussian arrogance — Militaristic
journalism.

Anyone who, like myself, set foot on German
soil for the first time after years of sojourn
in foreign lands, and more particularly in
the colonies, just at the moment that Ger-
many was mobilising for the great European
war, must surely have been filled, as I was,
with a certain feeling of melancholy, a
slight uneasiness with regard to the state
of mind of his fellow-cbuntrymen as it
showed itself in these dramatic days of
August in conversations in the street, in
cafes and restaurants, and in the articles
appearing in the Press. We Germans have
never learnt to think soundly on political
subjects. Bismarck's political heritage, al-

21

22 TWO WAR YEARS

though set forth in most popular form in his
Reflections and Reminiscences, a book that
anyone opposing this war from the point of
view rather of prudence than of ethics might
utilise as an unending source of propaganda,
has not descended to our rulers in any sort
of living form. But an unbounded political
ndiveU, an incredible lack of judgment and
of understanding of the point of view of
other peoples, who have their raison d'itre
just as much as we have, their vital in-
terests, their standploint of honour — ^have
not prevented us from trying to carry on a
grand system of Weltpolitik (world politics).
The average everyday German has never
really understood the English — either
before or during the war; in the latter's
colonial policy, which, according to pan-
German ideas, has no other aim than to
snatch from us our " place in the sun " ; in
their conception of liberty and civilisation,
which has entailed such mighty sacrifices
for them on behalf of their Allies; when
we trod Belgian neutrality underfoot and
thought England would stand and look on ;
at the time of the debates about universal

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 28

service, when practically every German,
even in the highest political circles, was
ready to wager that there would be a revolu-
tion in England sooner than any general
acceptance of Conscription; and, coming
down to more recent events, when the latest
huge British war loan provided the only fit
and proper answer to German frightfulness

Let me here say a word on the subject of
colonial policy, on which I may perhaps be
allowed to speak with a certain amount of
authority after extended travel in the
farthest corners of Africa, and from an in-
timate, personal knowledge of German as well
as English and French colonies. Germany
has less colonial territory than the older
colonists, it is true. It is also true that the
German struggle for the most widespread,
the most intensive and lucrative employ-
ment of the energies and capabilities of our
highly developed commercial land is justified.
But at the risk of being dubbed as abso-
lutely lacking in patriotism, I should like to
point out that in the first place the resources
we had at our disposal in our own colonial

24 TWO WAR YEARS

territory in tropical and sub-tropical Africa,
little exploited as they then were, would
have amply sufficed for our commercial
needs and colonising capacities — though
possibly not for our aspirations after world
power ! And secondly, the very liberal
character of England's trade and colonial
policy did not hinder us in any way from
reaching the top of the commercial tree even
in foreign colonies..

Anyone who knows English colonies knows
that the British Government, wherever it
has been possible to do so politically, that
is, in all her colonies which are already
properly organised and firmly established
as British, has always met in a most
generous and sympathetic way German,
and indeed any foreign, trade or other enter-
prises. New firms, with German capital,
were received with open arms, their ex-
cellence and value for the young country
heartily recognised and ungrudgingly en-
couraged ; not the slightest shadow of any
jealousy of foreign undertakings could ever
exist in a British colony, and every German
could be as sure as an Englishrnan himself

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 25

of being justly treated in every way and
encouraged in the most generous fashion in
his work.

Thousands of Germans otherwise thor-
oughly imbued with the national spirit
make no secret of the fact that they would
far rather live in a British than a German
colony. Too often in the latter the new-
comer was met at every point by an ex-
aggerated bureaucracy and made to feel by
some official that he was not a reserve
officer, and consequently a social inferior.
Hints were dropped to discourage him, and
inquiries were even made as to whether he
had enough money to book his passage back
to where he came from !

Far be it from me to wish to depreciate
by these words the value of our own colonial
efforts. As pioneers in Africa we were
working on the very best possible lines, but
we should have been content to go on learn-
ing from the much superior British colonial
methods, and should have finished and
perfected our own domain ins-tead of always
shouting jealously about other people's. I
am quite convinced that another ten years

26 TWO WAR YEARS

of undisturbed peaceful competition and
Germany, with her own very considerable
cblonial possessions on the one hand, and
the possibility on the other of pushing com-
mercial enterprise on the highest scale not
only in independent overseas states but under
the beneficent protection of English rule with
its true freedom and real furtherance of
trade " uplift," would have reached her goal
much better than by means of all the sword-
rattling Weltpolitik of the Pan-Germans.

It is true that in territory not yet properly
organised or guaranteed, politically still
doubtful, and in quite new protectorates,
especially along the routes to India, where
vital English interests are at stake, and on
the much-talked-of Persian Gulf, England
could not, until her main object was firmly
secured, meet in the same fair way
German desires with regard to commercial
activity. And there she has more than once
learnt to her cost the true character of the
German Weltpolitik.

That is the real meaning, at any rate so
far as colonial politics are concerned, of the
German-English contest for a " place in the

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 27

sun." No one who understands it aright
could ever condone the outgrowths of our
Weltpolitik, however much he might desire
to assist German ability to find practical
outlet in all suitable overseas territory,
nor could he ever forget the wealth of
wonderful deeds, wrought in the service of
human civilisation and freedom, Englishmen
can place to their credit years before we
ever began. With such considerations of
justice in view, we shotild have recognised
that there was a limit to our efforts after
expansion, and as a matter of fact we should
have gone further and fared better — ^in a
decade we shcJuld have probably been really
wealthy — ^for the English in their open-
handed way certainly left us a surprising
amount of room for the free exercise of our
commercial talents.

I have intentionally given an illustration
only of the colonial side of the problem
affecting German-English relations, so that
I may avoid dealing with any subject I do
not know from personal observation.

It was this English people, that, in spite
of all their egoism, have really done some-

28 TWO WAR YEARS

thing for civilisation, that the German of
August 1914 accused of being nothing but
a nation of shopkeepers with a cowardly,
narrow-minded policy that was unprepared
to make any sacrifice for others. It was
this people that the German of August 1914
— and his spokesman von Bethmann-HoU-
weg, who later thought it necessary to
defend himself against the charge of " having
brought too much ethics into politics " —
expected to stand by and see Belgium over-
ridden. It was this same England that we
believed would hold back even when the
Chancellor found it impossible to apply to
French colonial possessions the guarantee
he had given not to aim at any territorial
conquests in the war with France !

And so it was with all the more grimness,
with all the more gravity, that on that
memorable night of August 4th the terrible
blow fell. The English declaration of war
entered into the very soul of the German
people, who stood as a sacrifice to a political
miscalculation that had its roots less in a
lack of thought and experience than in a
boundless arrogance.

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 29

About the same time I was a witness of
those laughable scenes which took place on
the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, where, in
complete misjudgment of the whole politi-
cal situation, Japanese were carried shoul-
der high by the enthusiastic and worthy
citizens of Berlin under the erroneous im-
pression that these apparent arch-enemies
of Russia would naturally be allies of Ger-
many. Every German that was not blind
to the trend of true " world -politics " must
surely have shaken his head over this lament-
able spectacle. A few days afterwards Japan
sent its ultimatum against Kiao-Tchao !

It was the same incapability of thinking in
terms of true world -politics that led us lately
to believe that we might find supporters in
Mexico and Japan of the piracy we indulged
in as a result of America's intervention in
the war, the same incapability that blinded
us to the effect our methods must have on
other neutrals such as China and the South
American States. And although one admits
the possibility of a miscalculation being
made, yet a miscalculation with regard to
England's attitude was not only the height

30 TWO WAR YEARS

of political stupidity, but showed an absence
of moral sense. The moment England entered
the war, Germany lost the war.

And while the world-politicians of Berlin,
having recovered from their first dismay,
were making jokes about the " nation of
shopkeepers " and its little army which
they would just " have arrested " ; while
a little later the military events up to St.
Quentin and the Battle of the Marne seemed
to justify the idle mockers who knew nothing
bf England and had never even ventured their
noses out of Germany, those who had lived
in the colonies were uttering warnings against
any kind of optimism, and some already
felt that the war would end badly for us.

I belonged to the latter group. I ex-
pressed my conviction in this direction as
early as August 6th, 1914, in a letter which
I wrote from Berlin for my father's birth-
day. In it I maintained that in spite of
all our brilliant military successes, which,
incidentally, could not last, this war was a
mistake and would assuredly end in failure
for Germany. Littera scripta manet. Never
from that moment have I believed in final

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 31

victory for Germany. Slowly but surely
then I veered round to the position I now
occupy— that I could no longer even desire
victory for Germany.

Naturally I did my military duty. I saw
the fearful crime Germany was committing,
yet I hurried to the front with the millions
who believed that Germany was innocent
and had been attacked without cause. There
was nothing else to be done, and it must of
course be remembered that my final rupture
with Germany did not take place all of a
sudden. After a few months of war in
Masuria I was released as unfit for active
service as the result of a severe illness.

Of all the many episodes of my life
at the front, none is so deeply impressed
on my memory as the silent war of mutual
hatred I waged with my immediately su-
perior officer, a true prototype of his race,
a true Prussian. I can still see him, a man
of fifty-five or so, who, in spite of former
active service, had only reached the rank
of lieutenant, and who, as he told me
himself right at the beginning, in very mis-
placed confidence, rushed into active service

32 TWO WAR YEARS

again because in this way he could get
really good pay and would even have a
prospect of further promotion.

This Lieutenant Stein told me too of the
first weeks in Belgium, when he had been
in command of a company, and I can still
hear him boasting about his warlike pro-
pensities, and how his teacher had said about
him when he was a boy " he was capable of
stealing an altar-cloth and cutting it up to
make breeches for himself."

" When we wanted to do any commandeer-
ing or to plunder a house," so he told me,
" there was a very simple means. A man
belonging to my company would be ordered
to throw a Belgian rifle through an open
cellar window, the house would then be
searched for weapons, and even if we found
only one rifle we had orders to seize every-
thing without mercy and to drive out the
occupiers." I can still see the creature
standing in front of me and relating this and
many a similar tale in these first days before
he knew me. I have never forgotten it ;
and I think I owe much to Lieutenant
Stein. He helped me on the way I was

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 33

predestined to go, for had I not just re-
turned from the colonies and foreign lands,
imbued with liberal ideas, and from the first
torn by grave doubts ?

The Lieutenant may be an exception —
granted; but he is an exception unfortu-
nately but too often represented in that
army of millions on its invading march into
unhappy Belgium, among officers and non-
commissioned ofiicers, whom, at any rate
so far as active service is concerned, everyone
who has served in the German Army will
agree with me in calling on the average
thoroughly brutal. Lieutenant Stein gave
me my first real deep disgust of war. He is
a type that I have not invented, and he
will easily be identified by the German
military authorities from his signature on
my military pass as one of those arch-
Prussians who suddenly readopt a martial
air, suddenly revive and come into their
element again, although they may be sickly
old valetudinarians — the kind of men who
in civil life are probably enthusiastic mem-
bers of the " German Colonial Society," the
" Naval Union," and the " Pan-German
3

34 TWO WAR YEARS

Association," and ardent world-politicians
of the ale-bench type.

I found his stories afterwards confirmed
to the letter by one of the most famous
German war-correspondents, Paul Schweder,
the author of the four-volume work entitled
At Imperial Headquarters. With a naiveti
equal to Lieutenant Stein's, and trusting
no doubt to my then official position as
correspondent of a German paper, he gave
me descriptions of Belgian atrocities com-
mitted by our soldiers and the results of
our system of occupation that^ in all their
horrible nakedness, put everything that ever
appeared in the Entente newspapers abso-
lutely in the shade.

As early as the beginning of 1916 he told
me the plain truth that we were practically
starving Belgium and that the country was
really only kept alive by the Relief Com-
mission, and that we were attempting to ruin
any Belgian industry which might compete
with ours by a systematic removal of
machinery to Germany. And that was be-
fore the time of the Deportations.

Schweder's descriptions dealt for the most

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 35

part with the sexual morality of our soldiers
in the trenches. In spite of severe punish-
ments, so he assured me, thousands and
thousands of cases occurred of women and
young girls out of decent Belgian and
French families being outraged. The soldier
on short leave from the front, with the
prospect of a speedy return to the first-line
trenches and death staring him in the face,
did not care what happened ; the unhappy
victims were for the most part silent about
their shame, so that the cases of punishment
were very few and far between.

While I was at the front I heard extra-
ordinary things, for which I had again
detailed confirmation from Schweder, who
knew the whole of the Western Front well,
about the German policy of persecution in
Alsace-Lorraine. There the system was to
punish with imprisonment not only actions
but opinions. The authorities did not even
scruple to imprison girls out of highly-
respected houses who had perhaps made
some harmless remark in youthful ignorance,
and shut them up with common criminals
and prostitutes to work out their long

36 TWO WAR YEARS

sentence. Such scandalous acts, which are
a disgrace to humanity, Paul Schweder con-
firmed by the dozen or related at first-hand.

He was intelligent enough too, as was
evident from the many statements made by
him in confidential circles, to see through
the utter lack of foundation, the mendacity,
the immorality of what he wrote in his
books merely for the sake of filthy lucre;
but when I tried one day to take on a bet
with him that Verdun would not fall, he
took his revenge by spreading the report in
Constantinople that I was a Pro-Entente,
and doing his utmost to intrigue against me.
That is the German war-correspondent's
idea of morality 1

When I was released from the army in
the beginning of 1915, I joined the editorial
staff of the Kolnische Zeitung and remained
for some weeks in Cologne. I have not
retained any very special impressions of
this period of my activity, except perhaps
the recollection of the spirit of jingoistic
Prussianism that I — ^being a Badener — had
scarcely ever come across before in its full
glory, and, from the many confidential com-

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 37

munications and discussions among the
editorial staff, the feeling that even then
there was a certain nervousness and in-
security among those who, in their leading
articles, informed the public daily of their
absolute confidence in victory.

One curious thing at this time, perhaps
worthy of mention, was the disdainful con-
tempt with which these Prussians — even
before the fall of Przemysl-r-regarded Austria.
But the scornful and biting commentaries
made behind the scenes in the editorial
sanctum at the fall of this stronghold stood
in most striking contrast to what the papers
wrote about it.

Later, when I had already been a long
time in Turkey, a humorous incident gave
me renewed opportunity of seeing this Prus-
sian spirit of unbounded exaggeration of self
and depreciation of others. The incident is
at the same time characteristic of the spirit
of militarism with which the representatives
of the German Press are thoroughly imbued,
in spite of the opportunities most of them
have had through long visits to other
countries of gaining a little more savoir faire.

38 TWO WAR YEARS

One beautiful summer afternoon at a
promenade concert in the " Petit Champs "
at Pera I introduced an Austrian Lieutenant
of Dragoons I knew, belonging to one of the
best regiments, to our Balkan correspondent
who happened to be staying in Constanti-
nople : " Lieutenant N. ; Herr von M." The
correspondent sat down at the table and
repeated very distinctly : " Lieutenant-
Colonel von M." It turned out that he had
been a second lieutenant in the Prussian
Army, and had pushed himself up to this
wonderful rank in the Bulgarian Army,
instinctively combining journalism and mili-
tarism. My companion, however, with true
Austrian calm, took not the slightest notice
of the correction, did not spring up and
greet him with an enthusiastic " Ah ! my
dear fellow-officer, etc.," but started on an
ordinary social conversation.

Would anyone believe that next day old
Herr von M. took me roundly to task for
sitting at the same table as an Austrian
officer and appearing in public with him,
and informed me quasi-officially that as a
representative of the Kolnische Zeitung I

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 89

should associate only with the German colony
in Constantinople ?

I wonder which is the most irritating
characteristic of this type of mind — its
overbearing attitude towards our Allies, its
jingoistic " Imperial German " cant, or its
wounded dignity as a militarist who forgets
that he is a journalist and no longer an
officer ?

CHAPTER II

In Constantinople — Pro - Turkish considerations — The
dilemma of a Gallipoli correspondent — Under German
military control.

A FEW days after the fall of Przemysl I
set out for Constantinople. I left Germany
with a good deal of friendly feeling towards
the Turk. I was even quite well disposed
towards the Young Turks, although I knew
and appreciated the harm caused by their
regime and the reproaches levelled against
it since 1909. At any rate, when I landed
on Turkish soil I was certainly not lacking
in goodwill towards the Government of
Enver and Talaat, and nothing was further
from my thoughts than to prejudice myself
against my new sphere of work by any pre-
conceived criticism.

In comparison with Abdul-Hamid I re-

40

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 41

garded the regime of the Young Turks, in
spite of all, as a big step in advance and a
necessary one, and the parting words of one
of our old editors, a thorough connoisseur
of Turkey, lingered in my ears without very
much effect. He said : " You are going to
Constantinople. You will soon be able to
see for yourself the moral bankruptcy of the
Young Turks, and you will find that Turkey
is nothing but a dead body galvanised into
action, that will only last as long as the war
lasts and we Germans supply the galvanising
power." I would not believe it, and went
to Turkey with an absolutely open mind to
form my own opinion.

It must also be remembered that all the
pro-Turkish utterances of Eastern experts
of all shades and nationalities who em-
phasised the fact that the Turks were the
most amiable and honest nation of the East,
were not without their effect upon me ; also
I had read Pierre Loti. I was determined to
extend to the Turkish Government the
strong sympathy I already felt for the
Turkish people — and, let me here empha-
sise it, still feel. To undermine that sym-

42 TWO WAR YEARS

pathy, to make me lose my confidence in
this race, things wovdd have to go badly
indeed. They went worse than I ever
thought was possible.

I went first of all to the new Turkish
front in the Dardanelles and the Gallipoli
Peninsula, where everything was ruled by
militarism and there was but little oppor-
tunity to worry about polities. The com-
bined attack by sea and land had just begun,
and I passed the next few weeks on the
Ariburnu front. I found myself in the
entirely new position of war-correspondent.
I had now to write professionally about this
war which I detested with all my heart and
soul.

Well, I simply had to make the back fit
the burden. Whatever I did or did not do,
I have certainly the clear satisfaction of
knowing that I never wrote a single word
in praise of war. One will understand that,
in spite of my inward conviction that Ger-
many by unloosing the war on Europe
had committed a terrible crime against hu-
manity, in spite of my consciousness of
acting in a wrong cause, in spite of my

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 43

deep disgust of so much that I had already
seen, I was still interested in Turkey's
fight for existence, but from quite another
standpoint.

As an objective onlooker I did not have
to be an absolute hypocrite to do justice to
my journalistic duties to my paper. I got
to know the Turkish soldier with his stoical
heroism in defence, and the brilliant attack-
ing powers and courage of the Anatolians
with their blind belief in their Padishah, as
they were rushed to the defence of Stamboiil
and hurled themselves in a bayonet charge
against the British machine-guns under a
hail of shells from the sea. I gained a
high opinion of Turkish valour and powers
of resistance. I had no reason to stint
my praise or withhold my judgment. In
mess-tents and at various observation-
posts I made the personal acquaintance
of crowds of thoroughly sympathetic and
likeable Turkish officers. Let me mention
but one — Essad Pasha, the famous defender
of Jannina in the Balkan War.

I found quite enough material on my
two visits to Gallipoli during various phases

44 TWO WAR YEARS

of the fighting to write a series of feuilletons
without any glorification of militarism and
political aims. I confined myself to what
was of general human interest, to what was
picturesque, what was dramatic in the
struggle going on in this unique theatre of
war.

But even then I was beginning to have
my own opinion about much that I saw;
I was already torn by conflicting doubts.
Already I was beginning to ask myself
whether my sympathies would not gradually
turn more and more definitely to those who
were vainly storming these strong Turkish
forts from the sea, for the cause of true
civilisation, the cause of liberty, was mani-
festly on their side.

I had opportunity, too, of making com-
parisons from the dead and wounded and
the few prisoners there were between the
value of the human material sacrificed on
either side — on the one, brave but stupid
Anatolians, accustomed to dirt and misery ;
on the other cultured and highly civilised
men, sportsmen from the colonies who had
hurried from the farthest corners of the

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 45

earth to fight not only for the British cause,
but for the cause of civilisation.

But at that time I was not yet ripe for
the decision forced upon me later by other
things that I saw with my own eyes; I
had not yet reached that deep inward con-
viction that I should have to make a break
with Germany. The only thing I could do
and felt compelled to do then was to pay my
homage not only to Turkish patriotism and
Turkish bravery, but to the wonderful
courage and fearlessness of death shown by
those whom at that time I had, as a German,
to regard as my enemies ; this I did over
and over again in my articles.

I saw, too, the first indications of other
things. Traces of the most outspoken jingo-
ism among Turkish ofiicers became gradu-
ally apparent, and more than one Turkish
commander pointed out to me with ironical
emphasis that things went just as smoothly
and promptly in his sector, where there was
no German officer in charge, as anywhere
else.

On my second visit to the Dardanelles,
in summer, I heard of considerable quarrels

46 TWO WAR YEARS

over questions of rank, and there was more
than one outbreak of jingoistic arrogance on
the part of both Turkish and German subal-
terns, leading in some cases even to blows
and consequent severe punishment for in-
subordination. The climax was reached in
the scandal of supplanting General Weber,
commanding the " Southern Group " (Sedd-
ul-Bahr), by Vehib Pasha, a grim and fanatical
Turk. In this case the Turkish point of view
prevailed, for General Liman von Sanders,
Commander-in-Chief of the Gallipoli Army,
was determined not to lose his post, and
agreed slavishly with all that Enver Pasha
ordained.

From other fronts, such as the Irak and
the " Caucasus " (which was becoming more
and more a purely Armenian theatre of war,
without losing that chimerical designation in
the official reports !), there came even more
significant tales ; there German and Turkish
officers seemed to live still more of a cat-and-
dog life than in the Dardanelles. Of course
under the iron discipline of both Turks and
Germans, these unpleasant occurrences were
never allowed to come to such a pass that

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 47

they would interfere in any way with
military operations, but they were of signi-
ficance as symptoms of a deep distrust
of the Germans even in Turkish military
circles.

CHAPTER III

The great Armenian persecutions — The system of Talaat
and Enver — ^A demmoiation of Gennany as a cowardly
and conscienceless accomplice.

In spite of all, I returned to Constantinople
from my first visit to the Dardanelles with
very little diminution of friendly feeling
towards the Turks. My first experience
when I returned to the capital was the
beginning of the Armenian persecutions.
And here I may as well say at once that my
love for present-day Turkey perished abso-
lutely with this unique example in the
history of modern human civilisation of the
most appalling bestiality and misguided
jingoism. This, more than everything else
I saw on the German-Turkish side throughout
the war, persuaded me to take up arms against
my own people and to adopt the position I
now hold. I say " German-Turkish," for
I must hold the German Government as

48

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 49

equally responsible with the Turks for the
atrocities they allowed them to commit.

Here in neutral Switzerland, where so many
of these unfortunate Armenians have taken
refuge and such abundance of information
is available, so much material has been col-
lected that it is unnecessary for me to go
into details in this book. Suffice it to say
that the narration of all the heart-rending
occurrences that came to my personal know-
ledge during my stay in Turkey, without my
even trying to collect systematic information
on the subject, would fill a book. To my
deep sorrow I have to admit that, from
everything I have heard from reliable sources
— ^from German Red Cross doctors, officials
and employees of the Baghdad Railway,
members of the American Embassy, and
Turks themselves — although they are but
individual cases — I cannot regard as exagger-
ated such appalling facts and reports as are
contained for example in Arnold Toynbee's
Armenian Atrocities.^

* This and other works on the subject came to my
notice for the first time a few days before going to press.
Before that (in Turkey, Austria, and Germany) they were
quite unprocurable.
4

50 TWO WAR YEARS

In this little book, however, which pai>
takes more of the nature of an essay than
an exhaustive treatise, my task will be rather
to determine the system, the underlying
political thought and the responsibility of
Germany in all these horrors — massacres,
the seduction of women, children left to die
or thrown into the sea, pretty young girls
carried off into houses of ill repute, the com-
pulsory conversion to Islam and incorpora-
tion in Turkish harems of young women,
the ejection from their homes of eminent
and distinguished families by brutal gen-
darmes, attacks while on the march by paid
bands of robbers and criminals, " emigra-
tion " to notorious malaria swamps and
barren desert and mountain lands, victims
handed over to the wild lusts of roaming
Bedouins and Kurds — in a word, the triumph
of the basest brutality and most cold-
blooded refinement of cruelty in a war of
extermination in which half a million men,
and according to some estimates many more,
have perished, while the remaining one and
a half million of this most intelligent and
cultured race, one of the principal pioneers

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 51

of progress in the Ottoman Empire, see
nothing but complete extinction staring them
in the face through the rupture of family ties,
the deprivation of their rights, and economic
ruin.

The Armenian persecutions began in all
their cruelty, practically unannounced, in
April 1915. Certain events on the Caucasus
front, which no number of lies could explain
away, gave the Turkish Government the
welcome pretext for falling like wild animals
on the Armenians of the eastern vilajets —
the so-called Armenia Proper — and getting
to work there without deference to man,
woman, or child. This was called " the
restoration of order in the war zone by
military measures, rendered necessary by
the connivance of the inhabitants with the
enemy, treachery and armed support." The
first two or three hundred thousand Ar-
menians fell in the first rounding up.

That in those outlying districts situated
directly on the Russian frontier a number
of Armenians threw in their lot with the
advancing Russians, no one will seek to deny,
and not a single Armenian I have spoken to

52 TWO WAR YEARS

does deny it. But the " Armenian Volunteer
Corps " that fought on the side of Russia
was composed for the most part — that at
least has been proved beyond doubt — of
Russian Armenians settled in Transcaucasian
territory.

So far as the Turkish Armenians taking
part are concerned, no reasonable being
would think of denying Turkey as Sovereign
State the formal right of taking stringent
measures against these traitors and deserters.
But if I expressly recognise this right, I do
so with the big reservation that the frightful
sufferings undergone for centuries by a
people left by their rulers to the mercy of
marauding Kurds and oppressed by a govern-
ment of shameless extortioners, absolutely
absolve these deserters in the eyes of the
whole civilised world from any moral crime.

And yet I would willingly have gone so
far for the benefit of the Turks, in spite of
their terrible guilt towards this people, as
perhaps to keep my own counsel on the
subject, if it had merely been a case of the
execution of some hundreds under martial
law or the carrying out of other measures —

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 63

such as deportation — against a couple of
thousand Armenians and these strictly con-
fined to men. It is even possible that
Europe and America would have pardoned
Turkey for taking even stronger steps in
the nature of reprisals or measures of pre-
caution against the male inhabitants of
that part of Armenia Proper which was
gradually becoming a war zone. But from
the very beginning the persecutions were
carried on against women and children
as well as men, were extended to the
hundred thousand inhabitants of the six
eastern vilajets, and were characterised by
such savage brutality that the methods of
the slave-drivers of the African interior and
the persecution of Christians under Nero
are the only thing that can be compared
with them.

Every shred of justification for the Turkish
Government in their attempt to establish
this as an " evacuation necessary for military
purposes and for the prevention of unrest "
entirely vanishes in face of such methods,
and I do not believe that there is a single
decent German, cognisant of the facts of the

54 TWO WAR YEARS

case, who is not filled with real disgust of
the Young Turkish Government by such
cold-blooded butchery of the inhabitants of
whole districts and the deportation of others
with the express purpose of letting them die
en route. Anyone with human feelings,
however pro-Turkish he may be politically,
cannot think otherwise.

This " evacuation necessary for military
purposes " emptied Armenia Proper of men.
How often have Turks themselves told me
— ^I could mention names, but I will not
expose my informants, who were on the
whole decent exceptions to the rule, to the
wrath of Enver or Talaat — how often have
they assured me that practically not a single
Armenian is to be found in Armenia 1 And
it is equally certain that scarcely one can be
left alive of all that horde of deported men
who escaped the first massacres and were
hunted up hill and down dale in a state of
starvation, exposed to attacks by Kurds,
decimated by spotted typhus, and finally
abandoned to their fate in the scorching
deserts of Northern Mesopotamia and
Northern Syria. One has only to read the

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 55

statistics of the population of the six vilajets
of Armenia Proper to discover the hundreds
of thousands of victims of this wholesale
murder.

But unfortunately that was not all. The
Turkish Government went farther, much
farther. They aimed at the whole Armenian
people, not only in Armenia itself, but also
in the " Diaspora," in Anatolia Proper and
in the capital. They were at that time
some hundred thousand. In this case they
could scarcely go on the principle of" evacua-
tion of the war zone," for the inhabitants
were hundreds of miles both from the Eastern
front and from the Dardanelles, so they had
to resort to other measures.

They suddenly and miraculously dis-
covered a universal conspiracy among the
Armenians of the Empire. It was only by a
trick of this kind that they could succeed
in carrying out their system of exterminating
the entire Armenian race. The Turkish
Government skilfully influenced public
opinion throughout the whole world, and
then discovered, nay, arranged for, local con-
spiracies. They then falsified all the details

56 TWO WAR YEARS

so that they might go on for months in peace
and quiet with their campaign of extermina-
tion.

In a series of semi-official articles in the
newspapers of the Committee of Young
Turks it was made quite clear that all
Armenians were dangerous conspirators who,
in order to shake off the Ottoman yoke, had
collected firearms and bombs and had ar-
ranged, with the help of English and Russian
money, for a terrible slaughter of Turks on
the day that the English fleet overcame the
armies on the Dardanelles.

I must here emphasise the fact that all the
arguments the Turkish Government brought
against the Armenians did not escape my
notice. They were indeed evident enough
in official and semi-official publications and
in the writings of German " experts on
Turkey." I investigated everything, even
right at the beginning of my stay in Turkey,
and always from a thoroughly pro-Turkish
point of view. That did not prevent me,
however, from coming to my present point
of view.

Herr Zimmermann, the Secretary of State

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 67

for Foreign Affairs, has only got to refer to
the date of his letter to the editorial staff of
my paper, in which he speaks of my con-
fidential report to the paper on this subject
which went through his hands and aroused
his interest, and he wiU find what opinions I
held as early as the summer of 1916 on the
subject of the Armenian persecutions — and
this without my having any particular sym-
pathy for the Armenians, for it was not till
much later that I got to know them and their
high intellectual qualities through personal
intercourse.

Here I can only give my final judgment
on all these pros and cons, and say to the best
of my knowledge and opinion, that after the
first act in this drama of massacre and death
— ^the brutal " evacuation of the war zone "
in Armenia Proper — ^the meanest, the lowest,
the most cynical, most criminal act of race-
fanaticism that the history of mankind has
to show was the extension of the system of
deportation, with its wilful neglect and starva-
tion of the victims, to further hundreds of
thousands of Armenians in the Capital and
Interior. And these were people who, through

58 TWO WAR YEARS

their place of residence, their surroundings,
their social status, their preoccupation in
work and wage-earning, were quite incapable
of taking any active part in politics.

Others of them, again, belonged to families
of high social standing and culture, bound
to the land by a thousand ties, coming of a
well-to-do, old-established stock, and from
traditional training and ordinary prudence
holding themselves scrupulously apart from
all revolutionary doings. All were sur-
rounded by a far superior number of in-
habitants belonging to other races.

This diabolical crime was committed solely
and only because of the Turkish feeling of
economic and intellectual inferiority to that
non-Turkish element, for the set purpose of
obtaining handsome compensation for them-
selves, and was undertaken with the cowardly
acquiescence of the German Government
in full knowledge of the facts.

Of this long chain of crime I saw at least
the beginning thousands of times with my
own eyes. Hardly had I returned from my
first visit to the Dardanelles than these per-
secutions began in the whole of Anatolia and

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 59

even in Constantinople, and continued with
but slight intermissions of a week or two at
different times till shortly before I left Con-
stantinople in December 1916.

That was the time when in the flourishing
western vilajets of Anatolia, beginning with
Brussa and Adabazar, where the well-stocked
farms in Armenian hands must have been an
eyesore to a Government that had written
" forcible nationalisation " on their standard,
the whole household goods of respectable
families were thrown into the street and
sold for a mere song, because their owners
often had only an hour till they were routed
out by the waiting gendarme and hustled
off into the Interior. The fittings of the
houses, naturally unsaleable in the hurry,
usually fell to the lot of marauding " mohad-
jirs" (Mohammedan immigrants), who, often
enough armed to the teeth by the " Com-
mittee," began the disturbances which were
then exposed as " Armenian conspiracies."

That was the time when mothers, appar-
ently in absolute despair, sold their own
children, because they had been robbed of
their last penny and could not let their

60 TWO WAR YEARS

children perish on that terrible march into
the distant Interior.

How many countless times did I have to
look on at that typical spectacle of little
bands of Armenians belonging to the capital
being escorted through the streets of Pera by
two gendarmes in their ragged murky grey
uniforms with their typical brutal Anatolian
faces, while a policeman who could read and
write marched behind with a notebook in
his hand, beckoning people at random out
of the crowd with an imperious gesture, and
if their papers showed them to be Armenians,
simply herding them in with the rest and
marching them off to the "Karakol" of
Galata - Serai, the chief police-station in
Pera, where he delivered up his daily bag of
Armenians.

The way these imprisonments and depor-
tations were carried on is a most striking re-
futation of the claims of the Turkish Govern-
ment that they were acting only in righteous
indignation over the discovery of a great
conspiracy. This is entirely untrue.

With the most cold-blooded calculation
and method, the number of Armenians to be

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 61

deported were divided out over a period of
many months, indeed one may say over
nearly a year and a half. The deportations
only began to abate when the downfall of
the Armenian Patriarchate in summer 1916
dealt the final blow to the social life of the
Armenians. They more or less ceased in
December 1916 with the gathering-in of all
those who had formerly paid the military
exemption tax — among them many eminent
Armenian business men.

What can be said of the " righteous, spon-
taneous indignation " of the Armenian
Government when, for example, of two
Armenian porters belonging to the same
house — brothers — one is deported to-day and
the other not till a fortnight later ; or when
the number of Armenians to be delivered up
daily from a certain quarter of the town
is fixed at a definite figure, say two hundred
or a thousand, as I have been told was the
case by reliable Turks who were in full touch
with the police organisation and knew the
system of these deportations ?

Of the ebb and flow of these persecutions,
all that can be said is that the daily number

62 TWO WAR YEARS

of deportations increased when the Turks
were annoyed over some Russian victory,
and that the banishments miraculously
abated when the military catastrophes of
Erzerum, Trebizond, and Erzindjan gave
the Government food for thought and led
them to wonder if perhaps Nemesis was
going to overtake them after all.

And then the method of transport ! Every
day towards evening, when these un-
fortunate creatures had been collected in
the police-stations, the women and children
were packed into electric-trams while the
men and boys were compelled to go off on
foot to Galata with a couple of blankets
and only the barest necessities for their
terrible journey packed in a small bag.

Of course they were not all poor people by
any means. This dire fate might befall any-
one any day or any hour, from the caretaker
and the tradesman to members of the best
families. I know cases where men of high
education, belonging to aristocratic families
— engineers, doctors, lawyers — ^were banished
from Pera in this disgusting way under cover
of darkness to spend the night on the plat-

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 68

forms of the Haidar-Pasha station, and then
be packed off in the morning on the Anatolian
Railway — of course they paid for their
tickets and all travelling expenses ! — ^to the
Interior, where they died of spotted typhus,
or, in rare cases after their recovery from
this terrible malady, were permitted, after
endless pleading, to return broken in body and
soul to their homes as " harmless." Among
these bands herded about from pillar to
post like cattle there were hundreds and
thousands of gentle, refined women of good
family and of perfect European culture and
manners.

For the most part it was the sad fate of
those deported to be sent off on an endless
journey by foot, to the far-off Arabian
frontier, where they were treated with the
most terrible brutality. There, in the midst
of a population wholly foreign and but
little sympathetic to their race, left to their
fate on a barren mountain-side, without
money, without shelter, without medical
assistance, without the means of earning a
livelihood, they perished in want and misery.

The women and children were always

64 TWO WAR YEARS

separated from the men. That was the
characteristic of all the deportations. It was
an attempt to strike at the very core of their
national being and annihilate them by the
tearing asunder of all family ties.

That was how a very large part of the
Armenian people disappeared. They were
the ''persons transported elsewhere," as the
elegant title of the " Provisional Law " ran,
which gave full stewardship over their well-
stocked farms to the " Committee " with
its zeal for " internal colonisation " with
purely Turkish elements. In this way the
great goal was reached — the forcible nation-
alisation of a land of mixed races.

While Anatolia was gradually emptied
of all the forces that had hitherto made for
progress, while the deserted towns and
villages and flourishing fields of those who
had been banished fell into the hands of the
lowest " mohadjirs " — ^hordes of the most
dissipated Mohammedan emigrants — ^that
stream of unhappy beings trickled on ever
more slowly to its distant goal, leaving the
dead bodies of women and children, old men
and boys, as milestones to mark the way.

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 65

The few that did reach the "settlement"
alive — that is, the fever-ridden, hunger-
stricken concentration camps — continually
molested by raiding Bedouins and Kurds,
gradually sickened and died a slower and
even more horrible death.

Sometimes even this was not speedy
enough for the Government, and a case
occurred in Autumn 1916 — absolutely veri-
fied by statements made by German em-
ployees on the Baghdad Railway — ^where
some thousands of Armenians, brought as
workers to this stretch, of railway, mysteri-
ously vanished one day without leaving a
trace. Apparently they were simply shipped
off into the desert without more ado and
there massacred.

This terrible catalogue of crime on the
part of the Government of Talaat is, however,
in spite of all censorship and obstruction,
being dealt with officially in all quarters of
the globe — by the American Embassy at
Constantinople and in neutral and Entente
countries — and at the conclusion of peace
it will be brought as an accusation against
the criminal brotherhood of Young Turks by
5

66 TWO WAR YEARS

a merciless court of all the civilised nations
of the world.

I have spoken to Armenians who have
said to me, " In former times the old Sultan
Abdul-Hamid used to have us massacred by
thousands. We were delivered over by well-
organised pogroms to the Kurds at stated
times, and certainly we suffered cruelly
enough. Then the Young Turks, as the case
of Adana in 1909 shows, started on a blood-
shed of thousands. But after what we have
just gone through we long with all our hearts
for the days of the old massacres. Now it is
no longer a case of a certain number of mas-
sacred ; now our whole people is being slowly
but surely exterminated by the national
hatred of an apparently civilised, apparently
modern, and therefore infinitely more
dangerous Government.

" Now they get hold of our women and
children and send them long journeys on
foot to concentration camps in barren districts
where they die. The pitiful remnants of our
population in the villages and towns of the
Interior, where the local authorities have
carried out the commands of the central

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 67

Government most zealously, are forcibly con-
verted to Islam, and our young girls are
confined in Turkish harems and places of
low repute.

" The race is to vanish to the very last
man, and why ? Because the Turks have
recognised their intellectual bankruptcy,
their economic incompetence, and their social
inferiority to the progressive Armenian ele-
ment, to which Abdul -Hamid, in spite of
occasional massacres, knew well enough how
to adapt himself, and which he even utilised
in all its power in high offices of state. Because
now that they themselves are being decimated
by a weary and unsuccessful war of terrible
bloodshed that was lost before it was begun,
they hope in this way to retain the sym-
pathy of their peoples and preserve the
superiority of their element in the State.

" These are not sporadic outbursts of
wrath, as they were in the case of Hamid, but
a definitely thought-out political measure
against our people, and for this very reason
we can hope for no mercy. Germany, as
we have seen, tolerates the annihilation of our
people through weakness and lack of con-

68 TWO WAR YEARS

science, and if the war lasts much longer the
Armenian people will have ceased to exist.
That is why we long for the old regime of
Abdul-Hamid, terrible as it was for us."

Has there ever been a greater tragedy in
the history of a people — ^and of a people that
have never held any illusions as to political
independence, wedged in as they are between
two Great Powers, and who had no real irre-
dentist feelings towards Russia, and, up to
the moment when the Young Turks betrayed
them shamefully and broke the ties of com-
radeship that had bound them together as
revolutionaries against the old despotic
system of Abdul-Hamid, were as thoroughly
loyal citizens of the Ottoman Empire as
any of the other peoples of this land, except-
ing perhaps the Turks themselves ?

I hope that these few words may have
given sufficient indication of the spirit and
outcome of this system of extermination. I
should like to mention just one more episode
which affected me personally more than
anything I experienced in Turkey.

One day in the summer of 1916 my wife
went out alone about midday to buy some-

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 69

thing in the Grand Rue de Pera. We
lived a few steps from Galata-Serai and had
plenty of opportunity from our balcony
of seeing the bands of Armenian deportees
arriving at the police-station under the escort
of gendarmes. Familiarity with such sights
finally dulled our sympathies, and we began
to think of them not as episodes affecting
human individuals, but rather as political
events.

On this particular day, however, my wife
came back to the house trembling all over.
She had not been able to go on her errand.
As she passed the " karakol," she had heard
through the open hall door the agonising
groans of a tortured being, a dull wailing
like the sound of an animal being tormented
to death. " An Armenian," she was informed
by the people standing at the door. The
crowd was then dispersed by a policeman.

" If such scenes occur in broad daylight
in the busiest part of the European town of
Pera, I should like to know what is done to
Armenians in the uncivilised Interior," my
wife asked me. " If the Turks act like
wild beasts here in the capital, so that a

70 TWO WAR YEARS

woman going through the main streets gets
a shock like that to her nerves, then I can't
live in this frightful country." And then
she burst into a fit of sobbing and let loose all
her pent-up passion against what she and I
had had to witness for more than a year
every time we set foot out of doors.

" You are brutes, you Gernians, miser-
able brutes, that you tolerate this from the
Turks when you still have the country abso-
lutely in your hands. You are cowardly
brutes, and I will never set foot in your
horrible country again. God, how I hate
Germany ! "

It was then, when my own wife, trembling
and sobbing, in grief, rage, and disgust at
such cowardliness, flung this denunciation
of my country in my face that I finally
and absolutely broke with Germany. Un-
fortunately I had known only too long that
it had to come.

I thought of the conversations I had had
about the Armenian question with members
of the German Embassy in Constantinople
and, of a very different kind, with Mr.
Morgenthau, the American Ambassador.

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 71

I had never felt fully convinced by the
protestations of the German Embassy that
they had done their utmost to put a check
on the murderous attacks on harmless Ar-
menians far from the theatre of war, who
from their whole surroundings and their
social class could not be in a position to take
an active part in politics, and on the cold-
blooded neglect and starvation of women
and children apparently deported for no
other reason than to die. The attitude of
the German Government towards the Ar-
menian question had impressed me as a
mixture of cowardice and lack of conscience
on the one hand and the most short-sighted
stupidity on the other.

The American Ambassador, who took the
most generous interest in the Armenians,
and has done so much for the cause of
humanity in Turkey, was naturally much
too reserved on this most burning question
to give a German journalist like myself
his true opinion about the attitude of his
German colleagues. But from the many
conversations and discussions I had with
him, I gathered nothing that would turn me

72 TWO WAR YEARS

from the opinion I had already formed of
the German Embassy, and I had given him
several hints of what that opinion was.

The attitude of Germany was, in the first
place, as I have said, one of boundless
cowardice. For we had the Turkish Govern-
ment firmly enough in hand, from the mili-
tary as well as the financial and political
point of view, to insist upon the observance
of the simplest principles of humanity if we
wanted to. Enver, and still more Talaat,
who as Minister of the Interior and really
Dictator of Turkey was principally respon-
sible for the Armenian persecutions, had
no other choice than to follow Germany's
lead unconditionally, and they would have
accepted without any hesitation, if perhaps
with a little grumbling, any definite ruling
of Germany's even on this Armenian question
that lay so near their hearts.

From hundreds of examples it has been
proved that the Germany Embassy never
showed any undue delicacy for even per-
fectly legitimate Turkish interests and feel-
ings in matters affecting German interests,
and that they always got their own way where

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 73

it was a question, for example, of Germans
being oppressed, or superseded by Turks in
the Government and ruling bodies. And
yet I had to stand and look on when our
Embassy was not even capable of granting
her due and proper rights to a perfectly
innocent German lady married to an Ar-
menian who had been deported with many
other Armenians. She appealed for redress
to the German Embassy, but her only re-
ward was to wait day after day in the
vestibule of the Embassy for her case to
be heard.

Turks themselves have found cynical en-
joyment in this measureless cowardice of
ours and compared it with the attitude of the
Russian Government, who, if they had found
themselves in a similar position to Germany,
would have been prepared, in spite of the
Capitulations being abolished, to make a
political case, if necessary, out of the pro-
tection due to one poor Russian Jew. Turks
have, very politely but none the less de-
finitely, made it quite clear to me that at
bottom they felt nothing but contempt for
our policy of letting things slide:

74 TWO WAR YEARS

Our attitude was characterised, secondly,
by lack of conscience. To look on while life
and property, the well-being and culture of
thousands,- are sacrificed, and to content
oneself with weak formal protests when one
is in a position to take most energetic
command of the situation, is nothing but
the most criminal lack of conscience, and
I cannot get rid of the suspicion that, in
spite of the fine ofiicial phrases one was so
often treated to in the German Embassy on
the subject of the " Armenian problem," our
diplomats were very little concerned with
the preservation of this people.

What leads me to bring this terrible charge
against them ? The fact that I never saw
anything in all this pother on the part of our
diplomats when the venerable old Armenian
Patriarch appeared at the Embassy with his
suite after some particularly frightful suffer-
ings of the Armenian population, and begged
with tears in his eyes for help from the
Embassy, however late — and I assisted more
than once at such scenes in the Embassy
and listened to the conversations of the
officials — I never saw anything but concern

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 75

about German prestige and offended vanity.
As far as I saw, there was never any concern
for the fate of the Armenian people. The
fact that time and again I heard from the
mouths of Germans of all grades, from the
highest to the lowest, so far as they did not
have to keep strictly to the official German
versions, expressions of hatred against the
Armenians which were based on the most
short-sighted judgment, had no relation to
the facts of the case, and were merely
thoughtless echoes of the official Turkish
statements.

And cases have actually been proved to
have occurred, from the testimony of German
doctors and Red Cross nurses returned from
the Interior, of German officers light-heartedly
taking the initiative in exterminating and
scattering the Armenians when the less-
zealous local authorities who stUl retained
some remnants of human feeling, scrupled to
obey the instructions of " Nur-el-Osmanieh "
(the headquarters of the Committee at
Stamboul).

The case is well known and has been
absolutely verified of the scandalous conduct

76 TWO WAR YEARS

of two German officers passing through a
village in far Asia Minor, where the Armenians
had taken refuge in their houses and bar-
ricaded them to prevent being herded off
like cattle. The order had been given that
guns were to be turned on them, but not a
single Turk had the courage to carry out this
order and fire on women and children.
Without any authority whatsoever, the
two German officers then turned to and gave
an exhibition of their shooting capacities 1

Such shameful acts are of course isolated
cases, but they are on a par with the opinions
expressed about the Armenian people by
dozens of educated Germans of high position
— not to speak of military men at all.

A case of this kind where German soldiers
were guilty of an attack on Armenians in the
interior of Anatolia, was the subject of
frequent official discussion at the German
Embassy, and was finally brought to the
notice of the authorities in Germany by
Graf Wolff-Metternich, a really high-
principled and humane man. The material
result of this was that through the unheard-
of cowardice of our Government, this man —

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 77

who in spite of his age and in contrast to
the weak-minded and criminally optimistic
Freiherr von Wangenheim had made many
an attempt to get a firmer grip of the
Turkish Government — was simply hounded
out of office by the Turks and weakly
sacrificed without a struggle by Berlin.

What, finally, is one to think of the spirit
of our German officials in regard to the
Armenian question, when one hears such
well-verified tales as were told me shortly
before I left Constantinople by an eminent
Hungarian banker (whose name I will not
reveal) ? He related, for example, that " a
German officer, with the title of Baron, and
closely connected with the military attache,"
went one day to the bazaar in Stamboul arid
chose a valuable carpet from an Armenian,
which he had put down to his account and
sent to his house in Pera. Then when it
came to paying for it, he promptly set the
price twenty pounds lower than had been
stipulated, and indicated to the Armenian
dealer that in view of the good understand-
ing between himself (the officer) and the
Turkish President of police, he would do

78 TWO WAR YEARS

well not to trouble him further in the
matter ! I only cite this case because I am
unfortunately compelled to believe in its
absolute authenticity.

Shortsighted stupidity, finally, is how I
characterised the inactive toleration on the
part of our Imperial representatives of this
policy of extermination of the Armenian
race. Our Government could not have been
blind to the breaking flood of Turkish
jingoism, and no one with any glimmer of
foresight could have doubted for a moment
since the summer of 1915 that Turkey would
only go with us so long as she needed our
military and financial aid, and that we should
have no place, not even a purely commercial
one, in a fully turkified Turkey.

In spite of the lamentations one heard
often enough from the mouths of officials
over this well-recognised and unpalatable
fact, we tolerated the extermination of a race
of over one and a half million of people of
progressive culture, with the European point
of view, intellectually adaptable, absolutely
free from jingoism and fanaticism, and
eminently cosmopolitan in feeling ; we per-

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 79

mitted the disappearance of the only con-
ceivable counterbalance to the hopelessly
nationalistic, anti-foreign Young Turkish
element, and through our cowardice and lack
of conscience have made deadly enemies of
the few that will rise from the ruins of a race
that used to be in thorough sympathy with
Germany.

An intelligent German Government would,
in face of the increasingly evident Young
Turkish spirit, have used every means in their
power to retain the sympathies of the Ar-
menians, and indeed to win them in greater
numbers. The Armenians waited for us,
trembled with impatience for us, to give a
definite ruling. Their disappointment, their
hatred of us is unbounded now — and rightly
so — and if a German ever again wants to
take up business in the East he will have to
reckon with this afflicted people so long as
one of them exists.

To answer the Armenian question in the
way I have done here, one does not
necessarily need to have the slightest liking
or the least sympathy for them as a race.
(I have, however, intimated that they deserve

80 TWO WAR YEARS

at least that much from their high intellectual
and social abilities.) One only requires to
have a feeling for humanity to abhor the
way in which hundreds of thousands of these
unfortunate people were disposed of; one
only requires to understand the commercial
and social needs of a vast country like Turkey,
so undeveloped and yet so capable of develop-
ment, to place the highest value on the
preservation of this restless, active, and
eminently useful element ; one only requires
to open one's eyes and look at the facts
dispassionately to deny utterly and abso-
lutely what the Turks have tried to make
the world believe about the Armenians, in
order that they might go on with their
work of extermination in peace and quiet;
one only requires to have a slight feeling
of one's dignity as a German to refuse to
condone the pitiful cowardice of our Govern-
ment over the Armenian question.

The mixture of cowardice, lack of con-
science, and lack of foresight of which our
Government has been guilty in Armenian
affairs is quite enough to undermine com-
pletely the political loyalty of any thinking

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 81

man who has any regard for humanity and
civilisation. Every German cannot be ex-
pected to bear as lightheartedly as the
diplomats of Pera the shame of having history
point to the fact that the annihilation, with
every refinement of cruelty, of a people of
high social development, numbering over
one and a half million, was contemporaneous
with Germany's greatest power in Turkey.

In long confidential reports to my paper
I made perfectly clear to them the whole
position with regard to the Armenian perse-
cutions and the brutal jingoistic spirit of
the Young Turks apparent in them. The
Foreign Office, too, took notice of these
reports. But I saw no trace of the fruits of
this knowledge in the attitude of my paper.

The determination never to re-enter the
editorial offices of that paper came to me on
that dramatic occasion when my wife hurled
her denunciation of Germany in my teeth.
I at least owe a personal debt of gratitude
to the poor murdered and tortured Ar-
menians, for it is to them I owe my moral
and political enfranchisement.

6

CHAPTER IV

The tide of war — Enver's offensive for the " liberation
of the Caucasus " — The Dardanelles Campaign ; the
fate of Constantinople twice hangs in the balance —
Nervous tension in international Pera — Bulgaria's
attitude — Turkish rancour against her former enemy
— German illusions of a separate peace with Russia —
Bang Ferdinand's time-serving — Lack of munitions
in the Dardanelles — A mysterious death : a political
murder ? — ^The evacuation of GallipoH — ^The Turkish
version of victory — Constantinople unrelieved — Kut-
el-Amara — Propaganda for the " Holy War " — A
prisoner of repute — Loyalty of Anglo-Indian officers
— ^Turkish communiques and their worth — ^The fall of
Erzerum — Official lies — ^The treatment of prisoners
— Political speculation with prisoners of war — Treat-
ment of alien subjects — Stagnation and lassitude in
the summer of 1916 — ^The Greeks in Turkey — Dread
of Greek massacres — Rumania's entry — Terrible disap-
pointment — The three phases of the war for Turkey.

It will be necessary to devote a few lines
to a review of the principal features of the
war, so far as it affected the life of the
Turkish capital, in order to have a military
and political background for what I saw
among the Turks during my twenty months'

82

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 83

stay in their country. To that I will add
a short description of the economic situation.

When I arrived in Constantinople, Turkey
had already completed her first winter
campaign in the Caucasus, and had repelled
the attack of the Entente fleet on the
Dardanelles, culminating in the events of
March 18th, 1915. But Enver Pasha had
completely misjudged the relation between
the means at his disposal and the task
before him when, out of pure vanity and
a mad desire for expansion, he undertook
a personally conducted offensive for " the
liberation of the Caucasus." The terrible
defeats inflicted on the Turkish army on
this occasion were kept from the knowledge
of the people by a rigorous censorship
and the falsification of the communiques.
This was 'particularly the case in the
enormous Turkish losses sustained at Sary-
kamish.

Enver had put this great Caucasus ojEten-
sive in hand out of pure wanton folly,
thinking by so doing to win laurels for
himself and to have something tangible to
show those Turkish ultra-Nationalists who

84 TWO WAR YEARS

always had an eye on Turkestan and Turan
and thought that now was the time to carry
out their programme of a " Greater Turkey."
It was this mad undertaking, bound as it
was to come to grief, that first showed
Enver Pasha in his true colours. I shall
have something to say about his character
in another connection, which will show
how gravely he has been over-estimated
in Europe.

From the beginning of March 1915 to
the beginning of January 1916 the situation
was practically entirely commanded by the
battles in the Dardanelles and GaUipoli.
It has now been accepted as a recognised
fact even in the countries belonging to the
Entente that the sacrifice of a few more
ships on March 18th would have decided
the fate of the Dardanelles. To their
great astonishment the gallant defenders
of the coast forts found that the attack
had suddenly ceased. Dozens of the
German naval gunners who were manning
the batteries of Chanakkal6 on that
memorable day told me later that they
had quite made up their minds the fleet

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 85

would ultimately win, and that they them-
selves could not have held out much longer.
Such an outcome was expected hourly in
Constantinople, and I was told by influential
people that all the archives, stores of money,
etc., had already been removed to Konia.

It is a remarkable fact that for a second
time, in the first days of September, the
fate of Constantinople was again hanging
in the balance — a fact which is no longer a
secret in England and France. The British
had extended their line northwards from
Ariburnu to Anaforta, and a heroic dash
by the Anzacs had captured the summit
of the Koja-Jemen-Dagh, and so given
them direct command of the whole peninsula
of Gallipoli and the insufficiently protected
Dardanelles forts behind them. It is still
a mystery to the people of Constantinople
why the British troops did not follow up
this victory. The fact is that this time
again the money and archives were hurried
off from Constantinople to Asia, and
a German ojficer in Constantinople gave
me the entertaining information that he
had really seriously thought of hiring a

86 TWO WAR YEARS

window in the Grand Ruede Pera, so
that he and his family might watch the
triumphal entry of the Entente troops ! It
would be easier to enjoy the joke of this
if it were not overshadowed by such fearful
tragedy.

I have already indicated the dilemma
in which I was placed on my first and second
visits to the Gallipoli front. I was torn
by conflicting doubts as to whom my
sympathies ought ultimately to turn to — ^to
the heroic Turkish defender, who was in-
deed fighting for the existence of his country,
although in an unsuccessful and unjust
cause, for German militarism and the
exaggerated jingoism of the Young Turks,
or to those who were officially my enemies
but whom, knowing as I did who was
responsible for the great crime of the war,
I could not regard as such.

In those September days I had already
had some experience of Turkish politics and
their defiance of the laws of humanity,
and my sympathies were all for those
thousands of fine colonial troops — such men
as one seldom sees — sacrificing their lives

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 87

in one last colossal attack, which if it had
been prolonged even for another hour might
have sealed the fate of the Straits and
would have meant the first decisive step
towards the overthrow of our forces ; for
the capture of Constantinople would have
been the beginning of the end. I am not
ashamed to confess that, German as I am,
that was the only feeling I had when I
heard of the British victory and the subse-
quent British defeat at Anaforta. The
Battle of Anaforta was the last desperate
attempt to break the resistance in the
Dardanelles.

While the men of Stamboul and Anatolia
— the nucleus of the Ottoman Empire — were
defending the City of tihe Caliph at the gate
of the Dardanelles, with reinforcements from
Arab regiments when they were utterly
exhausted in the autumn, the other half
of the metropolis, the cosmopolitan Galata-
Pera, was trembling for the safety of the
attacking Entente troops, and lived through
the long months in a state of continual
tension, longing always for the moment of
release.

88 TWO WAR YEARS

There was a great deal of nervous calcula-
tion about the probable attitude of Bulgaria
among both the Turks and the thousands
of thoroughly illoyal citizens of the Ottoman
Empire composing the population of the
capital. From lack of information and also
as a result of Bulgaria's long delay in
declaring her attitude, an undue optimism
ruled right up to the last moment among
those who desired the overthrow of the
Turks.

The Bulgarian question was closely bound
up with the question of the munitions
supply. The Turkish resistance on Gallipoli
threatened to collapse through lack of
munitions, and general interest centred —
with very varied desires with regard to
the outcome — on the rare ammunition trains
that were brought through Rumania only
after an enormous expenditure of Turkish
powers of persuasion and the application
of any amount of " palm-oil."

I was present at Sedd-ul-Bahr at the be-
ginning of July, when, owing to lack of
ammunition, the German-Turkish artillery
could only reply with one shot to every

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 89

ten British ones, while the insufficiently
equipped factories of Top-hane and Zeitun-
burnu, under the control of General Pieper,
Director of Munitions, were turning out
as many shells as was possible with the
inferior material at their disposal, and the
Turkish fortresses in the Interior had to
send their supply of often very antiquated
ammunition to the Dardanelles. The whole
dramatic import of the situation, which
might any day give rise to epoch-making
events, was only too evident in Con-
stantinople. It is not to be wondered at
that everyone looked forward with feverish
impatience to Bulgaria's entry either on
one side or the other.

But, in spite of all this, the Turks could
scarcely bear the sight of the first Bulgarian
soldiers who appeared in autumn 1915 in
full uniform in the streets of " Carihrad."
The necessary surrender of the land along
the Maritza right to the gates of the holy
city of " Edirne " (Adrianople) was but
little to the liking of the Turkish patriots,
and even the successful issue of the Dar-
danelles campaign, only made possible by

90 TWO WAR YEARS

Bulgaria's joining the Central Powers, was
not sufficient to win the real sympathies of
the Turks for their new allies.

It was not until much later that the
position was altered as a result of the
combined fighting in Dobrudja. Practically
right up to the end of 1916, the real, short-
sighted, jingoistic Turk looked askance at
his new ally and viewed with irritation and
distrust the desecration of his sacred
" Edirne," the symbol of his national re-
naissance, while the ambition of all politicians
was to bring Bulgaria one day to a surrender
of the lost territory and more.

Even in 1916 I found Young Turks, be-
longing to the Committee, who still regarded
the Bulgarians as their erstwhile cunning
foe and as a set of unscrupulous, un-
sympathetic opportunists who might again
become a menace to them. They even
admitted that the Serbs were " infinitely
nicer enemies in the Balkan war," and
appealed to them very much more than
the Bulgarians. The late Prince Yussuf
Izzedin Effendi, of whose tragic death I
shall speak later, was always a declared

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 91

opponent of the cession of the Maritza
territory.

The possibility of Bulgaria's voluntarily
surrendering this territory and possibly much
more through extending her own possessions
westward if Greece joined the Entente, had
a great deal to do with Turkey's attitude
during the whole of 1916, and goes far
to explain why she dallied so long over the
idea of aUenating Greece, and used all sorts
of chicanery against the Ottoman and
Hellenic Greeks in Turkey. Another and
much more important factor was, as we
shaU see, fundamental race-hatred and
avarice.

As the question as to which side Btdgaria
was to join was of decisive moment for
Turkish politics, I may perhaps be per-
mitted to add a few details from personal
information. I had an interesting sidelight on
the German attempts to win over Bulgaria
from a well-informed source in Sofia. Every-
one was much puzzled over the apparent
clumsiness of the German Ambassador in
Sofia, Dr. Michahelles, in his diplomatic mis-
sion to gain help from Bulgaria. King Ferdi-

92 TWO WAR YEARS

nand, of course, made great difficulties, and
at a very early stage of the proceedings
he turned to the Prime Minister, Radoslavoff,
and said : " Away with your German Jews !
Why don't you take the good French gold ? "
(referring, of course, to the offered French
loan). The king was cunning enough in his
own way, but he was a poor politician and
utterly vacillating, for he had no sort of
ideals to live up to and was prompted by
a spirit of unworthy opportunism, and it
needed Radoslavoff's threat of instant
resignation to bring him to a definite de-
cision.

The transference shortly afterwards of the
German Ambassador to a northern post
strengthened the impression in confidential
circles in Sofia that he had been lacking in
diplomacy. The truth was that he had re-
ceived most contradictory instructions from
Berlin, which did not allow him to do his
utmost to win Bulgaria for the German cause.
The Imperial Chancellor seems even then —
it was after the great German summer offen-
sive against Russia — to have given serious
consideration to the possibility of a separate

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 93

peace with Russia, and was quite convinced
that Russia would never lay down arms
without having humiliated Bulgaria, should
the latter prove a traitor to the Slavic cause
and turn against Serbia.

In diplomatic circles in Berlin this know-
ledge and the decision — so naive in view
of all their boasted Weltpolitik — ^to pursue
the quite illusory dream of a separate peace
with Russia, seemed to outweigh, at any
rate for some time, anxiety with regard to
the state of affairs in Gallipoli and the
complete lack of munitions shortly to be
expected, and lamed their initiative in their
dealings with Bulgaria.

It is probably not generally known that
here again the military party assumed the
lead in politics, and took the Bulgarian
matter in hand themselves. In the space
of no time at all, Bulgaria's entry on the
German side was an accomplished fact. It
was Colonel von Leipzig, the German
military attache at the Constantinople Em-
bassy, that clinched the matter at the
critical moment by a journey to Sofia, and
the whole thing was arranged in less than

94 TWO WAR YEARS

a fortnight. But that journey cost him
his life. On the way back to the Turkish
capital Herr von Leipzig — one of the nicest
and most gentlemanly men that ever wore
a field-grey uniform — visited the Dardanelles
front, and on the little Thracian railway-
station of Uzunkoprii he met his death
mysteriously. He was found shot through
the head in the bare little waiting-room of
this miserable wayside station.

It so happened that on my way to the
Dardanelles on that day at the end of June
1915, I passed through this little station,
and was the sole European witness of this
tragic event, which increased still further
the excitement already hanging over Con-
stantinople in these weeks of lack of
ammunition and terrible onslaughts against
Gallipoli, and which had already risen to
fever-heat over the nervous rumours that
were going the rounds as to Bulgaria's
attitude. The occurrence, of course, was
used by political intriguers for their own
ends.

I wrote a warm and truly heartfelt
appreciation of this excellent man and good

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 95

friend, which was published in my paper
at the time, and it was not till long after-
wards, weeks, indeed, after my return, that
I had any idea that the sudden death of
Herr von Leipzig on his return from a
mission of the highest political importance
was looked upon by the German anti-
English party as the work of English spies
in the service of Mr. Fitzmaurice, who was
formerly at the English Embassy in Con-
stantinople.

I was an eye-witness of the occurrence,
or rather, I was beside the Colonel a minute
after I heard the shot, and saw the hole in
his revolver-holster where the bullet had gone
through. I heard the frank evidence of
all the Turks present, from the policeman
who had arrived first on the scene to the
staff doctor who came later, and I immedi-
ately telegraphed to my paper from the
scene of the accident, giving them my im-
pression of the affair.

On my return to Constantinople I was
invited to give evidence under oath before
the German Consulate- General, and there
one may find the written evidence of what

96 TWO WAR YEARS

I had to say : a pure and absolute ac-
cident.

I must not omit to taention here that
the German authorities themselves in Con-
stantinople were so thoroughly convinced
that the idea of murder was out of the
question, that Colonel von Leipzig's widow,
who, believing this version of the story,
hurried to Turkey, to make her own in-
vestigations, had the greatest difficulty in
being officially received by the Embassy
and Consulate. I had a long interview
with her in the " Pera Palace," where she
complained bitterly of her treatment in this
respect. I have tarried a little over this
tragic episode as it shows all the political
ramifications that ran together in the Turkish
capital and the dramatic excitement that
prevailed.

The day came, however, when the Entente
troops first evacuated Anaforta-Ariburnu,
and then, after along and protracted struggle,
Sedd-ul-Bahr, and so the entire Gallipoli
Peninsula. The Dardanelles campaign was
at an end.

The impossibility of ever breaking down

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 97

that solid Turkish resistance, the sufferings
of the soldiers practically starved to death
in the trenches during the cold winter storms,
the difficulties of obtaining supplies of pro-
visions, drinking water, ammunition, etc.,
with a heavy sea and a harbourless coast,
anxiety about the superior heavy artillery
that the enemy kept bringing up after the
overthrow of Serbia — everything combined
to strengthen the Entente in their decision
to put an end to the campaign in Gallipoii.

The Turkish soldiers had now free access
to the sea, for all the British Dreadnoughts
and cruisers had disappeared ; the war-
like activity which had raged for months
on the narrow Gallipoii Peninsula suddenly
ceased ; Austrian heavy and medium
howitzers undertook the coast defence, and
a garrison of a few thousand Turkish soldiers
stayed behind in the Narrows for precaution's
sake, while the whole huge Gallipoii army
in an endless train was marched off to the
Taurus to meet the Russian advance
threatening in Armenia.

But Constantinople remained "unre-
lieved." And from that moment a dull
7

98 TWO WAR YEARS

resignation, a dreary waiting for one scarcely
knew what, disappointment, and pessimism
took the place of the nervous tension that
had been so apparent in those who had been
longing for the fall of the Turkish capital.

But the Turks rejoiced. It is scarcely to
be wondered at that they tried to construe
the failure of the Gallipoli affair as a wonder-
ful and dazzling victory for Islam over the
combined forces of the Great Powers. It
is only in line of course with Turkish official
untruthfulness that, in shameless perversion
of facts, they talked glibly of the irresistible
bayonet attacks of their " ghazi " (heroes)
and of thousands of Englishmen taken
prisoner or chased back into the sea, whereas
it was a well-known fact even in Pera that
the retreat had been carried out in a most
masterly way with practically no loss of
life, and that the Turks themselves had
been caught napping this time; but to lie
is human, and the Turks owed it to their
prestige to have an unmistakeable and great
military victory to form the basis of that
"Holy War" that was so long in getting
under weigh; and when all is said and

in CONSTANTINOPLE 99

done, their truly heroic defence really was
a victory.

The absurd thing about all these lies was
the way they were foisted on a public who
already knew the true state of affairs and
had nothing whatever to do with the " Holy
War."

The Turks made even more of the second
piece of good fortune that fell to their lot —
the fall of Kut-el-Amara. General Town-
shend became their cherished prisoner, and
was provided with a villa on the island of
Halki in the Sea of Marmora, with a staff
of Turkish naval officers to act as inter-
preters.

In the neighbouring and more fashionable
Prinkipo he was received by practically
everyone with open arms, and once even
a concert was arranged in his honour, which
was attended by the elite of Turkish and
Levantine Society — the Turks because of
their vanity and pride in their important
prisoner of war, the Levantines because of
their political sympathy with General
Townshend, who, although there against his
will, seemed to bring them a breath of

100 TWO WAR YEARS

that world they had lost all contact with
for nearly two years and for which they
longed with the most ardent and passionate
desire.

On the occasion of the Bairam Festival
— ^the highest Musulman festival — in 1916,
the Turkish Government made a point of
sending a group of about seventy Anglo-
Indian Mohammedan officers, who had been
taken prisoner at the fall of Kut and were
now interned in Eski-Shehir, to the " Caliph
City of Stamboul," where they were enter-
tained for ten days in different Turkish
hotels and shown everything that would
seem to be of value for " Holy War " pro-
paganda purposes.

I had the opportunity of conversing with
some of these Indian officers in the garden
of the " Petit Champs," where their appear-
ance one evening made a most tremendous
sensation. I had of course to be very
discreet, for we were surrounded by spies,
but I came away firmly convinced that, in
spite of their good treatment, which was of
course not without its purpose, and most
unceasing and determined efforts to influence

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 101

them, the Turkish propaganda so far as
these Indian officers was concerned had
entirely failed and that their loyalty to
England remained absolutely unshaken.
Will anyone blame me, if, angry and disgusted
as I was at all these Turkish intrigues — it
was shortly after that dramatic scene of
the tortured Armenian which called forth
that denunciation of Germany from my
wife — I said to a group of these Indians —
just this and nothing more 1 — that they
should not believe all that the Turks told
them, and that the result of the war would
be very different from what the Turks
thought? One of the officers thanked me
with glowing eyes on behalf of his comrades
and himself, and told me what a comfort
my assurance was to them. They had
nothing to complain of, he said, save being
cut off from all news except official Turkish
reports.

The very most that even the wildest fancy
could find in events like Gallipoli and Kut-
el-Amara was brought forward for the benefit
of the " Holy War," but, despite everything,
the propaganda was, as we have seen, a

102 TWO WAR YEARS

hopeless failure. Reverses such as the fall
of Erzerum, Trebizond, and Erzindjan,
on the contrary, which took place between
the two above-mentioned victories, have
never to this day been even so much as
hinted at in the official war communiques for
the Ottoman public. For the communiques
for home and foreign consumption were
always radically different.

It was not until very much later, when
the Turkish counter-offensive against Bitlis
seemed to be bearing fruit, that a few mild
indications of these defeats were made in
Parliament, with a careful suppression of all
names, and the newspapers were empowered
to make some mention of a "purely tem-
porary retreat of no strategic importance "
which had then taken place. The usual
stereotyped report of 3,000 or 5,000 dead
that was officially given out after every battle
throughout the whole course of operations
in the Irak scarcely came off in this case,
however, and, to tell the truth, Erzerum
and these countless English dead reported
in the Irak did more than anything else
to undermine completely the people's already

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 108

sadly shaken confidence in the official war
communiques.

If there was a real victory to be cele-
brated, the mosb stringent police orders
were issued that flags were to be flown
everywhere — on every building. Surely it
is only in a land like Turkey that one could
see the curious sight I witnessed after the
fall of Bucharest — the victorious flags of
the Central Powers, surmounted by the
Turkish crescent, flying even from the
balconies of Rumanian subjects, because
there had been a definite police warning
issued that, in the case of non-compliance
with the order, the houses would be immedi-
ately ransacked and the families inhabiting
them sent off to the interior of Anatolia.
Under the circumstances, refusal to carry
out police orders was impossible. That
was the Turkish idea of the respect due to
individual liberty.

This gives me an opportunity to say
something of the treatment of prisoners.
I may say in one word that it is, on the
whole, good. Justice compels me to admit
that the Turk, when he does take prisoners,

104 TWO WAR YEARS

treats them kindly and chivalrously; but
he takes few prisoners, for he knows only
too well how to wield his bayonet in those
murderous charges he makes. Indeed, apart
from the few hundred that fell into their
hands in the Dardanelles or on the Russo-
Turkish front, together with the crews of
a few captured submarines, all the Turkish
prisoners of war come from Kut-el-Amara.

But the primitive Turk is all too sadly
lacking in the comforts of life himself to be
able to provide them for his prisoners.
Without the help of the Commission that
works under the protection of the American
Embassy for the relief of the Entente
prisoners, and sends piles of warm clothing,
excellent shoes (which rouse the special envy
of the Turks), chocolate, cakes, etc., to the
Anatolian camps, these men, accustomed to
European ways of life, would be in a sad
plight.

The repeated and humiliating marching
of prisoners of war through the streets of
Constantinople to show them off to the
childish gaze of a people much influenced
by externals, might with advantage be

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 105

dispensed with. And it was certainly not
exactly kind to make wounded English
officers process past the Sultan at the
Friday's " Selamlik " ; it was rather too
like slave-driving methods and the abuses
of the Middle Ages.

I was an unwilling witness of one most
regrettable incident that took place shortly
before I left Constantinople. In this case
the sufferings of some unfortunate prisoners
of war were cruelly exploited for political
ends. A whole troup of about 2,000
Rumanians, from Dobrudja, were hounded
up and down the streets of Pera and
Stamboul in a purposely destitute and
exhausted condition, so that the appearance
of these poor wretches, who hung their
heads dejectedly and had lost all trace of
military bearing, might give the impression
that the Turks were dealing with a very
inferior foe and would soon be at the end
of the business. This is how the authorities
were going to increase the confidence of
the doubting population !

The Turkish escort had apparently given
these prisoners nothing to drink on the

10« TWO WAR YEARS

way — although the Turk, being a great
water-drinker himself, knows only too well
what a man needs on a dusty journey of
several days on a transport train — ^for with
my own eyes I saw dozens of them simply
flinging themselves like animals full length
on the ground when they reached the
Taksim Fountain, and trying to slake
their terrible thirst. It was with pitiable
trickery like this — ^for which no doubt Enver
Pasha was responsible, for the simple Turkish
soldier is much too good-natured not to
share his bread and water with his prisoners
— that attempts were made, at the expense
of all feelings of humanity, to cheer up the
uneducated masses.

The Turkish Government, however, apart
from a few cases of reprisals, where the
prisoners were treated in an even more
barbaric and primitive manner, did not, as
a general rule, go the length of interning
civilians. This was not without its own
good grounds. In the first place, a very
large part of the trade of the country lay
in the hands of these Europeans, and they
were consequently absolutely indispensable

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 107

to the Turks in their everyday commercial
life; secondly, a Government that had
systematically rooted out the Armenians,
hanged Arabian notables, and brutally mis-
handled the Greeks, could scarcely dispense,
in the eyes of Europe, with the very last
pretence of being more or less civilised ;
and, lastly, perhaps the fear of being brought
to book later on may have had a restraining
influence on them — we saw how growing
anxiety about the Russian advance on the
Eastern front led, at any rate for a time,
to a discontinuance of Armenian persecu-
tions.

Besides all this, hundreds and thousands
of Turks were resident in enemy countries,
and of course the desire was to avoid
reprisals. So the Government contented
itself with threats and subterfuges, after
a first unsuccessful attempt to expose a
large number of French subjects to fire
from the enemy guns in Gallipoli — a plan
which failed entirely, owing to the energetic
opposition of officials of the American Em-
bassy who had accompanied these chosen
victims to Gallipoli. Every means was used,

108 TWO WAR YEARS

however, even announcements in the news-
papers and a Vote of Credit " for the removal
of enemy subjects to the interior," to keep
the sword of Damocles for ever hanging
over the heads of all subjects of Entente
countries, even women and children.

From the fall of Kut-el-Amara up to
the time of Rumania's entry into the
war, there were no important episodes of a
military or political nature from the parti-
cular point of view of Turkey. (The Arabian
catastrophe I will deal with in another
connection.) With the ebb and flow of
war and constant anxiety about Russia's
movements, time passed slowly enough.
It was well known that the Turkish offensive
was already considerably weakened and the
lack of means of transport was an open
secret. Starvation and spotted typhus raged
at the Front as well as in the interior and
the capital. Asiatic cholera even made its
appearance in European Pera, but was
fortunately successfully combated by
vaccination.

Further decisive Russian victories on the
west and the Gulf of Alexandretta were

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 109

expected after the fall of Erzindjan, for
the ambition and personal hatred against
the Turks of the Grand Duke Nicolai
Nicolajivitch, commanding the armies in
Armenia, would probably stop short at
nothing less than complete overthrow of
the enemy. Simple-minded Souls, whose
geography was not their strong point,
reckoned how long it would take the Russians
to get from Anatolig, and when the conquest
of Constantinople would take place.

The less optimistic among those who were
panting for final emancipation from the
Young Turkish military yoke set their hopes
on the entry of Rumania. In all circles
Rumania's probable attitude was fairly
clear, and no one ever doubted that she
would be drawn into the war.

In consequence of the new operations
after Rumania's declaration of war, the
revival of the offensive in Macedonia, and
the events in Athens, all eyes were turned
again to the ever-doubtful Greece. The
Greek element, Ottoman and Hellenic com-
bined, in Constantinople alone may be
reckoned at several hundred thousand.

110 TWO WAR YEARS

Never were sympathies so great for Venizelos,
never was the spirit of the Irredenta so
outspoken as among the Greeks in Turkey,
who had been the dupes since 1909 of every
possible kind of Young Turkish intrigue.
In contrast to the Armenians, the great
mass of whom thought and felt as loyal
Ottoman citizens right up to the very end
when Talaat and Enver's policy of exter-
mination set in against them — in contrast
to these absolutely helpless and therefore
all the more easy victims to the Turkish
national lust of persecution, the attitude
of the Greek citizens was all the more
marked.

Since the Grseco-Turkish war of 1912-13
and the impetus given to Pan-Hellenism by
the successful issue of the war, there is not
one single Greek in either country — no
matter what his social standing — that has
not ardently looked forward to and desired
the overthrow of Turkey. But the Greek
is much too clever to let his feelings be
seen; and he is not so unprotected as the
Armenian. And so up to the present time
the Turk has confined himself more to

IN CONSTANTINOPLE ill

small intrigues against the Greek population,
except in a few remote districts — more
especially the shores of the Black Sea—
where massacres like those organised among
the Armenians have been carried out, but
on a very much smaller scale.

Sympathy with Venizelos and the Irre-
dentist desire for Greece to throw in her
lot with the Entente are counterbalanced,
however, in the case of the Greeks living in
Turkey, by grave anxiety as to their own
welfare if it came to a break between the
two countries. Turkish hatred of the Greeks
knows no bounds, and it was no idle fear
that made the Greeks in Constantinople
tremble, in spite of their satisfaction politic-
ally, when the rumours were afloat in autumn
1916 of King Constantine's abdication and
Greece's entry on the side of the Entente.

But the ideas as to how the Turks would
act towards them in such a case were
diametrically opposed even among those
who had lived in the country a long time
and knew the Turkish mind exactly. Many
expected immediate Greek massacres on
the largest scale; others, again, expected

112 TWO WAR YEARS

only brutal intrigues and chicanery, economic
ruin ; still others thought that nothing at
all would happen, that the Turks were
already too demoralised, and that at any
rate in Pera the far superior Greek element
would completely command the situation.
This last I consider mere megalomaniac
optimism in view of the fact that Turkey
was still unbroken so far as things military
were concerned, and I believe that those
people were right who believed that Greece's
entry on the side of the Entente would be
the signal for the carrying out of atrocities
against all Greeks, at any rate in the com-
mercial world.

It would be interesting to know which
idea the German authorities favoured. That
the event would pass off without damage
being done, they apparently did not believe,
for in those days when Greece's decision
seemed to be imminent, the former Goeben
and the Breslau, which had been lying at
Stenia on the Bosporus, were brought up
with all speed and anchored just off the
coast with their guns turned on Pera, and
the German garrison, ^.s I knew from different

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 113

ojBacers, had orders to be prepared for an
alarm.

Did the Germans think they were going
to have to protect Turks or Greeks in the
ease of definite news from Athens ? Was
it Germany's intention to protect the Euro-
pean population, who had nothing to do
with the impending political decision,
although thfey might sympathise with it
— was it Germany's intention to protect
them, at any rate in this instance, from the
Turkish lust of extermination ? Had these
two ships, now known as the Jawuz Sultan
Selim and the Midilli, not belonged for a
long time to the Imperial Ottoman Navy ?

When Rumania flung off her shackles,
there was great rejoicing in Pera, and even
the greatest pessimists believed that relief
was near and would be accomplished within
two months at latest. But another and
more terrible reverse absolutely destroyed
the last shred of anti-Turkish hope, and
the victories in Rumania, especially the
fall of Bucharest, combined with the speech
of the Russian miuister Trepoff, had the
effect of sending over solid to the side of
8

114 TWO WAR YEARS

the Government even the few who had
hitherto, at least in theory, formed an
opposition, although a powerless one.

Victories shared with the Bulgarians, too,
did away with the last remains of unfriendly
feelings towards that people and consolidated
the Turko-Bulgarian Alliance. Indeed, one
may say that for Turkey the third great
phase of the war began with the removal
of all danger of the fall of Constantinople
through the collapse of the Rumanian
forces.

The first comprised the time of the
powerful attacks directed at the very heart
of the Empire, its most vulnerable point,
and ended with the English-French evacua-
tion of Gallipoli. The second was the period
of alternate successes and reverses, almost
a time of stagnation, when practically all
interest was centred on the Russian menace
in Asia Minor and the efforts made to
withstand it. It ended equally success-
fully with the removal of the Russian
menace from the Balkans. The third will
be the phase of increasing internal weak-
ness, of the dissipation of strength through

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 115

the sending of troops to Europe, of the
successful renewal of the English offensive
in Mesopotamia, perhaps even of an English-
French offensive against Syria and of the
final revolt of all the Arabian lands, ushered
in by the events in the Hedjaz and the
founding of a purely Arabian Caliphate. The
third phase cannot last longer than the
year 1917; it will mean the decision of
the whole European war.

CHAPTER V

The economic situation — Exaggerated Entente hopes —
Hunger and suffering among the civil population —
The system of requisitioning and the semi-ofl&cial
monopolists — Profiteering on the part of the Govern-
ment clique-^Frivolityandc3niicism — The "Djemiet"
— ^The delegates of the German Zentraleinhaufagesell-
schaft (Central Purchases Commission) — A hard battle
between German and Turkish intrigue — Reform of
the coinage — Paper money and its depreciation —
The hoarding of coin — The Russian rouble the best
investment.

During the entire course of the war as I
have briefly sketched it in the foregoing
pages, the economic situation in the whole
country and particularly in the capital
became more and more serious. But, let
me just say here, in anticipation, that
Turkey, being a purely agricultural country
with a very modest population, can never
be brought to sue for peace through
starvation, nor, with Germany backing
and financing her, through any general

116

IN CONSTANTINOPLE IIT

exhaustion of economic resources, until
Germany herself is brought to her knees.
Any victory must be a purely military and
pohtical one. The whole crux of the food
problem in Turkey is that the people suffer,
suffer cruelly, but not enough for hunger
to have any results in the shape of an earlier
conclusion of peace. This is the case also
with the Central Powers, as the Entente
have unfortunately only too surely con-
vinced themselves now after their first
illusions to the contrary.

There is another element in the Turkish
question too — the large majority of the
population are a heterogeneous mass of
enslaved and degenerate beings, outcasts
of society, plunged in the lowest social
and commercial depths, entirely lacking
in all initiative, who can never become
a factor in any political upheaval, for in
Turkey this can only be looked for from
the military or the educated classes. If
the Entente Powers ever counted on Turkey's
chronic state of starvation and lack of
supplies coming to their aid in this war,
they have made a sad mistake. Therefore

118 TWO WAR YEARS

in attempting to sketch in a few pages
the conditions of life and the economic
situation in Turkey, my aim is solely to
bring to light the underlying Turkish
methods, and the ethics and spirit of the
Young Turkish Government.

During the periods of the very acute
bread crises, which occurred more than once,
but notably in the beginning of 1916, some
dozen human beings literally died of hunger
daily in Constantinople alone. With my
own eyes I have repeatedly seen women
collapsing from exhaustion in the streets.
From many parts of the interior, particularly
Syria, there were reliable reports of a still
worse state of affairs. But even in more
normal times there was always a difficulty
in obtaining bread, for the means of com-
munication in that vast and primitive land
of Turkey are precarious at best, and it
was no easy matter to get the grain trans-
ported to the centres of consumption.

Then in Constantinople there was a
shortage not only of skilled labour, but of
coal for milling purposes. The result was
that the townspeople only received a daily

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 119

ration of a quarter of a kilogramme (about
8 oz. — not a quarter of an oka, which
would be about 10 oz.) of bread, which was
mostly of an indigestible and occasionally
very doubtful quality — ^utterly uneatable
by Europeans — although occasionally it was
quite good though coarse. If the poor
people in Constantinople wanted to supple-
ment this very insufficient allowance, they
could do so when things were in a flourishing
condition at the price of about 2| or
3 piastres (1 piastre = about 2jd.) the
English pound, and later 4 or 5 piastres.
Even this was for the most part only
procurable by clandestine means from
soldiers who were usually willing to turn
part of their bread ration into money.

This is about all that can be said about
the feeding of the people, for bread is by
far the most important food of the Oriental,
and the prices of the other foodstuffs soon
reached exorbitant heights. What were
the poor to feed on when rice, reckoned in
English coinage, cost roughly from 3*. 2d.
to 4iS. 4d. an oka (about 2^ lbs.), beans
2s. 4d. the oka, meat 8*. to 4«., and the

120 TWO WAR YEARS

cheapest sheep's cheese and olives, hitherto
the most common Turkish condiment to
eat with bread, rose to Ss. and Is. 8d. the
oka?

Wages, on the other hand, were ludicrously
low. We may obtain some idea of the
standard of living from the fact that the
Government, who always favoured the
soldiers, did not pay more than 5 piastres
(about Is.) a day to the families of soldiers
on active service. I have often wondered
what the people really did eat, and I was
never able to come to any satisfactory
conclusion, although I often went to market
myself to buy and see what other people
bought. It is significant enough that just
shortly before I left Constantinople — ^that
is, a few weeks after the Turco-Bulgarian-
German victories in Rumania and the fall
of Bucharest — ^the price of bread in the
Turkish capital, in spite of the widely
advertised " enormous supplies " taken in
Rumania, rose still higher.

I cannot speak from personal experience
of what happened after Christmas 1916 in
this connection, but everyone was quite

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 121

convinced, in spite of the official report,
that the harvest of 1916, despite the
tremendous and praiseworthy efforts of the
Ministry of Agriculture and the mihtary
authorities, would show a very marked
decrease as a result of the mobilisation of
agricultural labour, the requisitioning of
implements, and the shortage of buffaloes,
which, instead of ploughing fields, were
pulling guns over the snow-covered uplands
of Armenia. There was a very general idea
that the harvest of 1916 would be a horrible
catastrophe. And yet I am ftdly convinced,
and I must emphasise it again, that, in
spite of agricultural disaster, Turkey will
still go on as a military power.

And now let us see what the Government
did in connection with the food problem.
At a comparatively early stage they followed
Germany's example and introduced bread
tickets, which were quite successful so
long as the flour lasted. In the autumn of
1915 they took the organisation of the
bread supply for large towns out of the hands
of the municipalities, and gave it over to
the War Office. They got Parliament to

122 TWO WAR YEARS

vote a large fund to buy up all available
supplies of flour, and in view of the immense
importance of bread as the chief means of
nourishment of the masses, they decided to
sell it at a very considerable loss to them-
selves, so that the price of the daily ration
(though not of the supplementary ration)
remained very much as it had been in
peace time. The Government always
favoured the purely Mohammedan quarter
of the town so far as bread supply was
concerned, and the people living in Fatih
and other parts of Stamboul were very
much better off than the inhabitants of
Graeco-European Pera.

Then Talaat made speeches in the House
on the food question in which he did all in
his power to throw dust in the eyes of the
starving population, but he did not really
succeed in blinding anyone to the true
state of affairs. In February 1916, when
there was practically a famine in the
land, he even went so far as to declare
in Parliament that the food supplies for
the whole of Turkey had been so increased
by enormous purchases in Rumania, that

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 123

they were now fully assured for two
years.

It was no doubt with cynical enjoyment
that the " Committee " of the Young Turks
enlarged on the privations of the people in
such publications as the semi-official Tanin,
in which the following wonderful sentiment
appeared : " One can pass the night in
relative brightness without oil in one's lamp
if one thinks of the brilliant and glorious
future that this war is preparing for
Turkey ! "

One could have forgiven such cheap
phrases if they had been a true, though
possibly misguided, attempt to provide
comfort in face of real want ; but at the
same time as such paragraphs were appear-
ing, in the Tanin and thousands of poor
Turkish households had to spend the long
winter nights without a glimmer of light,
thousands of tons of oU were lying in Con-
stantinople alone in the stores of the official
accapareurs.

This brings me to the second series of
measures taken by the Turkish Govern-
ment to relieve the economic situation —

124 TWO WAR YEARS

those of a negative nature. Their positive
measures are pretty well exhausted when
one has mentioned their treatment of the
bread crisis.

The question of requisitioning is one of
the most important in Turkish life in war-
time, and is not without its ludicrous side.
In imitation of German war-time methods,
either wrongly understood or wittingly mis-
applied by Oriental greed, the Turkish
Government requisitioned pretty well every-
thing in the food line or in the shape of
articles of daily use that were sure to be
scarce and would necessarily rise in price.
But while in the civilised countries of Central
Europe the supplies so requisitioned were
sagely applied to the general good, the
members of the " Committee of Union and
Progress " looked with fine contempt and
the grim cynicism of arch-dictators on the
privations and sufferings of the people so
long as they did not actually starve, and
used the supplies requisitioned for the per-
sonal enrichment of their clique.

When I speak of requisitioning, I do not
mean the necessary military carrying off

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 125

of grain, cattle, vehicles, buffaloes and
horses, general equipment, and so on, in
exchange for a scrap of paper to be redeemed
after the war (of very doubtful value in view
of Turkey's position) — I do not mean that,
even though the way it was accomplished
bled the country far more than was necessary,
falling as it did in the country districts into
the hands of ignorant, brutal, and fanatical
underlings, and in the town being carried
out with every kind of refinement by the
central authorities. Too often it was a
means of violent " nationalisation " and
deprivation of property an,d rights exer-
cised especially against Armenians, Greeks,
and subjects of other Entente countries.
If there was a particularly nice villa or
handsome estate belonging to someone who
was not a Turk, soldiers were immediately
billeted there under some pretext or other,
and it was not long before these rough
Anatolians had reduced everything to rack
and ruin.

I do not mean either the terrible damage
to commercial life brought about by the
way the military authorities, in complete

126 TWO WAR YEARS

disregard of agricultural interests, were
always seizing railway waggons, and so
completely laming all initiative on the part
of farmers and merchants, whose goods
were usually simply emptied out on the
spot, exposed to ruin, or disposed of without
any kind of compensation being given.

What 1 do mean is the huge semi-official
cornering of food, which must be regarded
as typical of the Young Turks' idea of their
official responsibility towards those for whom
they exercised stewardship.

The " Bakal Clique " (" provision mer-
chants," " grocers ") was known through
the whole of Constantinople, and was keenly
criticised by the much injured public. It
was, first of all, under the official patronage
of the city prefect, Ismet Bey, a creature
of the Committee ; but later on, when they
realised that dire necessity made a con-
tinuance of this system of cornering quite
unthinkable, he was made the scapegoat,
and his dismissal from oflfice was freely com-
mented on in the Committee newspapers as
" an act of great solicitude." The Committee
thought that they would thus throw dust in

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 12T

the eyes of the sorely-tried people of Con-
stantinople.

Hundreds of thousands of Turkish pounds
were turned into cash in the shortest possible
time by this semi-official syndicate, at the ex-
pense of the starving population, and found
their way into the pockets of the administra-
tors. That was how the Young Turkish par-
venus were able to fulfil their one desire and
wriggle their way into the best clubs, where
they gambled away huge sums of money.

The method was simple enough: what-
ever was eatable or useable, but could only be
obtained by import from abroad, was " taken
charge of," and starvation rations, which
were simply ludicrously inadequate and
quite insufficient for the needs of even the
poorest household, were doled out by
" vesikas " (the ticket system).

The great stock of goods, however, was
sold secretly at exorbitant prices by the
creatures of the " Bakal Clique," who simply
cornered the market. That is how it hap-
pened that in Constantinople, cut off as it
was from the outer world and without
imports, even at the end of 1916, with a

128 TWO WAR YEARS

population of well over a million, there
were still unlimited stores of everything
available for those who could pay fancy
prices, while by the beginning of 1915
those less well endowed with worldly goods
had quite forgotten the meaning of comfort
and the poor were starving with ample
stores of everything still available.

In businesses belonging to enemy subjects
the system of requisitioning, of course,
reached a climax, stores of all kinds worth
thousands of pounds simply disappearing,
without any reason being given for carry-
ing them off, and nothing offered in exchange
but one of these famous " scraps of paper."
Cases have been verified and were freely
discussed in Pera of ladies' shoes and
ladies' clothing even being requisitioned and
turned into large sums of cash by public
auction.

The profiteering of Ismet and company,
who chose the specially productive centre
of the capital for their system of usury,
was not, however, by any means an isolated
case of administrative corruption, for exactly
the same system of requisitioning, holding

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 129

up and then reselling under private manage-
ment at as great a profit as possible,
underlay and underlies the great semi-
ofiicial Young Turkish commercial organisa-
tion, with branches throughout the whole
country, known as the " Djemiet " and
under the distinguished patronage of Talaat
himself.

After Ismet Bey's fall, the "Djemiet"
took over the supplying of the capital as
well (with the exception of bread). We
will speak elsewhere of this great organisation,
which was established not only for war
purposes, but to serve towards the nationalisa-
tion of economic life. So far as the system
of requisitioning is concerned, the Djemiet
comes into the picture through its firm oppo-
sition to German merchants who were trying
to buy up stores of food and raw materials
from their ally Turkey. The intrigues and
counter-intrigues on both sides sometimes
had most remarkable results.

One of the really bright sides of life in
Constantinople in wartime was the amuse-
ment one extracted from the silent and
desperate war continually being waged by
9

180 TWO WAR YEARS

the many well-fed gentlemen of the " Z.E.G."
(" Zentraleinkaufsgesellschaft," " Central Pur-
chasing Commission ") and their minions
who tried to rob Turkey of foodstuffs
and raw material for the benefit of Germany,
against the " Djemiet " and more parti-
cularly the Quartermaster-General, Ismail
Hakki Pasha, that wooden-legged, enor-
mously wealthy representative of the neo-
Turkish spirit — he was the most perfect
blend of Oriental politeness and narrow-
minded decision to do exactly the opposite
of what he had promised. On the Turkish
side, there was the determination to safeguard
the interests of the Army, and in the case of
the "Djemiet" the effort not to let any
foodstuffs out of Turkey — a, standpoint that
has at last found expression in a formal
prohibition of all export — ^then the quest
of personal enrichment on the part of the
great " Clique " ; on the German side, the
insatiable hunger for everything Turkey
could provide that had been lacking for a
long time in Germany : the whole thing
was a wonderfully variegated picture of
mutual intrigue.

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 131

The gentlemen of the " Z.E.G.," after
months of inactivity spent in reviUng the
Turks and studying Young Turkish and other
morals and manners by frequenting all the
pleasure resorts in the place, managed at
last to get the export of raw materials set
on the right road, and so it came about
that the fabulous sums in German money
that had to be put into circulation in
payment of these goods, in spite of Turkey's
indebtedness to Germany, led to a very
considerable depreciation in the value of
the mark even in Turkey for some time.

But until the understanding as to ex-
ports was finally arrived at, there were
many dramatic events in Constantinople,
culminating in the Turks re-requisitioning,
with the help of armed detachments, stores
already paid for by Germany and lying in
the warehouses of the " Z.E.G." and the
German Bank !

On the financial side, apart from Turkey's
enormous debt to Germany, the wonderful
attempt at a reform and standardisation
of the coinage in the middle of May 1916
is worthy of mention. The reform, which

182 TWO WAR YEARS

was a simplification of huge economic value
of the tremendously complicated money
system and introducing a theoretical gold
unit, must be regarded chiefly as a war
measure to prevent the rapid deterioration
of Turkish paper money.

This last attempt, as was obvious after a
few months' trial, was entirely unsuccessful,
and even hastened the fall of paper money,
for the population soon discovered at the
back of these drastic measures the thinly
veiled anxiety of the Government lest there
should be a further deterioration. Dire
punishments, such as the closing down of
money-changers' businesses and trial by
court-martial for the slightest offence, were
meted out to anyone found guilty of chang-
ing gold or even silver for paper.

In November 1916, however, it was an
open secret that, in spite of all these pro-
hibitions, there was no difiiculty in the
inland provinces and in Syria and Palestine
in changing a gold pound for two or more
paper pounds. In still more unfrequented
spots no paper money would be accepted,
so that the whole trade of the country

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 133

simply came to a standstill. Even in Con-
stantinople at the beginning of December
1916, paper stood to gold as 100 to 175.

The Anatolian population still went gaily
on, burying all the available silver medjidiehs
and even nickel piastres in their clay pots in
the ground, because being simple country
folk they could not understand, as the
Government with all its prayers and threats
were so anxious they should, that throughout
Turkey and in the greater and mightier
and equally victorious Germany, guaranteed
paper money was really much better than
actual coins, and was just as valuable as
gold ! The people could not but re-
member what had happened with the
" Kaime " after the Turco-Russian war,
when thousands who had believed in the
assurances of the Government suddenly
found themselves penniless. In Constan-
tinople it was a favourite joke to take one
of the new pound, half-pound, or quarter-
pound notes issued under German paper,
not gold, guarantee and printed only on
one side and say, "This [pointing to the
right side] is the present value, and that

184 TWO WAR YEARS

[blank side] will be the value on the con-
clusion of peace."

Even those who were better informed,
however, and sat at the receipt of custom,
did exactly the same as these stupid
Anatolian country-people ; no idea of
patriotism prevented them from collecting
everything metal they could lay their hands
on, and, in spite of all threats of punish-
ment — which could never overtake them!
— paying the highest price in paper money
for every gold piece they could get. Their
argument was : " One must of course have
something to live on in the time directly
following the conclusion of peace." In
ordinary trade and commerce, filthy, torn
paper notes, down to a paper piastre, came
more and more to be practically the only
exchange.

A discerning Turk said to me once : " It
would be a very good plan sometime to have
the police search these great men for coin
every evening on their return from the
official exchanges. That would be more
to the point than any reform in the coin-
age I "

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 135

Those who could not get gold, bought
roubles, which were regarded as one of the
very best speculations going, until one day
the Turkish Government, in their annoyance
at some Russian victory, suddenly deported
to Anatolia a rich Greek banker of the name
of Vlasdari, who was accused of having
speculated in roubles, which of course gave
them the double benefit of getting rid of a
Greek and seizing his beautiful estate in
Pera.

Only the greatest optimists were deceived
into believing that it was a profitable trans-
action to buy Austrian paper money at
the fabulously low price the Austrian
Krone had reached against the Turkish
pound, which was really neither politi-
cally nor financially in any better a state.
The members of the " Committee of Union
and Progress " had of course shipped their
gold off to Switzerland long ago.

CHAPTER VI

German propaganda and ethics — The unsuccessful " Holy
War " and the German Government — " The Holy
War" a crime against civilisation, an illusion, a farce
— Underhand dealings — The German Embassy the
dupe of adventurers — ^The morality of German Press
representatives — A trusty servant of the German
Embassy — Fine ofiScial distinctions of morality — The
German conception of International Law.

Now that we have given a rough sketch of
the main events of the war as it affected
the economic life of the people, and have
devoted a chapter to that sinister crime, the
Armenian persecutions, we shall leave the
Young Turks for a moment and turn to an
examination of German propaganda methods.
It is a very painful task for a German
who does not profess to be a " World
Politician," but really thinks in terms of
true " world-politics," to deal with the
many intrigues and machinations of our
Government in their relation to the so-called
" Holy War " (Arab. Djihad), where in

136

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 137

their quest of a vain illusion they stooped
to the very lowest means. Practically all
their hopes in that direction have been sadly
shattered. Their costly, unscrupulous, thor-
oughly unmoral efforts against European
civilisation in Mohammedan countries have
resulted in the terrific counter-stroke of the
defection of the Arabs and the foundation
of a purely Arabian Caliphate under English
protection. Thus England has already won
a brilliant victory against Germany and
Turkey in spite of Gallipoli and Kut-el-
Amara, although it seems probable that
even these will be wiped out by greater
deeds on the part of the Entente before long.
One could not have a better example of
Germany's total inability to succeed in the
sphere of world-politics.

The so-called " Holy War," if it had suc-
ceeded, would have been one of the greatest
crimes against human civilisation that even
Germany has on her conscience, remembering
as we do her recent ruthless " frightfulness "
at sea, and her attempt to set Mexico and
the Japanese against the land of most
modern civilisation and of greatest liberty.

138 TWO WAR YEARS

A successful " Djihad " spreading to all the
lands of Islam would have set back by years
all that civilisation so patiently and so
painfully won ; it would not have been at
all comparable with the Entente's use of
coloured troops in Europe which Germany
deprecated so loudly, for in the Holy War
it would have been a case of letting the
wildest fanaticism loose against the armies
of law and order and civilisation ; in the
ease of the Entente it was part of a purely
military action on the part of England and
France, who held under their sway all the
inhabitants, coloured and otherwise, of those
Colonial regions from which troops were sent
to Europe and to which they will return.

But the attempt against colonial civilisa-
tion did not succeed. The " Djihad," pro-
claimed as it was by the Turanian pseudo-
Caliph and violently anti-Entente, was
doomed to failure from the very start from
its obvious artificiality. It was a miserable
farce, or rather a tragi-comedy, the present
ending of which, namely the defection of
the Arabian Caliphate, is the direct
contrary of what had been aimed at with

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 139

such fanatical urgency and the use of such
immoral propaganda.

The attempt to " unloose " the Holy War
was due primarily to the most absurd illu-
sions. It would seem that in Germany, the
land of science, the home of so many eminent
doctors of research, even the scholars have
been attacked by that disease of being daz-
zled by wild political illusions, or surely,
knowing the countries of Islam outside-in
as they must, they would long ago have
raised their voices against such arrant folly.
It would seem that all her inherent know-
ledge, all her studies, have been of little
or no avail to Germany, so that mistake
after mistake has been committed in the
realm of world politics. It may be said that
Germany, even if she were doubtful of the
issue, should still not have left untried this
means of crippling her opponents. To that
I can only reply by pointing to the actual
position of affairs, weU known to Germany,
not only in English, but also in French and
Russian Islamic colonial territory, which
should have rendered the " Djihad " entirely
and absolutely out of the question.

140 TWO WAR YEARS

Let us take for example Egypt, French
North-West Africa, and Russian Turkestan,
not to speak of the masterly English colonial
rule in India, which has now been tested
and tried for centuries. Anyone who has
ever seen Egypt with the area under culture
practically doubled under modern English
rule by the help of every kind of technical
contrivance for the betterment of existing
conditions, and the skilful utilisation of all
available means at an expense of millions of
pounds, with its needy population given an
opportunity to earn a living wage and even
wealth through a lucrative cultivation of the
land under conditions that are a paradise
compared with what they were under the
Turkish rule of extortion and despotism —
anyone who has seen that must have looked
from the very beginning with a very doubt-
ful eye on Germany's and Turkey's illusions
of stirring up these well-doing people against
their rulers.

The same thing occurs again in the
extended territory of North-West Africa
from the Atlas lands to the Guinea coast
and Lake Chad, where France, as I know

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 141

from personal experience, stands on a high
level of colonial excellence, developing aU
the resources of the country with consum-
mate skill, shaping her " empire colonial "
more and more into a shining gem in the
crown of colonial endeavour, and, as I can
testify from my own observations in Morocco,
Senegal, the Niger, and the Interior of the
Guinea territories of "A.O.F." (Afrique
Occidentale rran9aise), capturing the hearts
of the whole population by her essential
culture, and, last but not least, winning the
Mohammedans by her clever Islam policy.
That, finally, Russia, at any rate from
the psychological standpoint, is perhaps the
best coloniser of Further Asia, even German
text-books on colonial policy admit un-
reservedly, and the glowing conditions that
she has brought about especially in the basin
of Ferghana in Turkestan by the introduction
of the flourishing and lucrative business of
cotton-growing are known to everyone. Only
politicians of the most wildly fantastic type,
who see everywhere what they want to see,
could believe that in this war the Turkish
"Turanist" bait would ever have any effect

142 TWO WAR YEARS

in Russian Central Asia, or make its inhabi-
tants now living in security, peace, and well-
being wish back again the conditions which
prevailed under the Emirs of Samarkand,
Khiva, and Bokhara. But Germany, who
should have been well informed if anyone was,
believed all these fantastic impossibilities.

One could let it pass with a slight feeling
of irritation against Germany if it were
merely a case of the failure of the " Djihad."
But unfortunately the propaganda, as stupid
as it was unsuccessful, exercised in this
connection, will be written down for all
time as one of the blackest and most despic-
able marks against Germany's account in
this war. In Turkey alone, the underhand
manipulation for the unloosing of the " Holy
War" and the German Press propaganda so
closely allied with it, indeed the whole way in
which the German cause in the East was repre-
sented journalistically throughout the war,
are subjects full of the saddest, most biting
irony, to sympathise with which must lower
every German who has lived in the Turkish
capital in the eyes of the entire civilised world.

In order to demonstrate the r61e played

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 148

in this affair by the German Embassy at
Constantinople I will not make an exhaustive
survey but simply confine myself to a few
episodes and outstanding features. An
eminent German Red Cross doctor, clear-
sighted and reliable, who had many tales
to tell of what he had seen in the " Cau-
casus " campaign, said to me one evening,
as we sat together at a promenade concert :
"Do you see that man in Prussian major's
uniform going past ? I met him twice in
Erzerum last winter. The man was nothing
but a clerk in a merchant's business in
Baku, and had learnt Russian there. He
has never done military service. When war
broke out, he hurried to the Embassy in
Pera and offered his services to stir up the
Georgians and other peoples of the Caucasus
against Russia. Of course he got full powers
to do what he wanted, and guns and am-
munition and piles of propaganda pamphlets
were placed at his disposal so that he might
carry on his work from the frontier of the
then still neutral Turkey. Whole chests full
of good gold coins were sent to him to be
distributed confidentially for propaganda

144 TWO WAR YEARS

purposes ; of course he was his own most
confidential friend I He went back to Er-
zerum without having won a single soul for
the cause of the ' D jihad.' That has not pre-
vented his living as a ' grand seigneur,' for the
Embassy are not yet daunted, and now the
fellow struts about in a major's tmiform, lent
to him, although he has never been a soldier, so
that the cause may gain still more prestige."
Numerous examples of similar measures
might be cited, and instances without num-
ber given, of the German Embassy being
made the, dupe of greedy adventurers who
treated them as an inexhaustible source of
gold. First one would appear on the scene
who announced himself as the one man to
cope with Afghanistan, then another would
come along on his way to Persia and play
the great man " on a special mission " for a
time in Pera while money belonging to the
German Empire would find its way into all
sorts of low haunts. And so things went
on for two years until, with the Arabian
catastrophfe, even the eyes of the great
diplomatic optimists of Ayas-Pasha must
surely have been opened.

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 145

I will only mention here how even a bona
fide connoisseur of the East like Baron von
Oppenheim, who had already made tours
of considerable value for research purposes
right across the Arabian Peninsula, and so
shoiild have known better than to share
these false illusions, doled out thousands
of marks from his own pocket — and millions
from official funds ! — to stir up the tribes
to take part in the " Djihad," and how he
returned to Pera from his propaganda tour
with a real Bedomn beard, and, still un-
abashed, took over the control of the
Germany Embassy's " News Bureau," which
kept up those much-derided war telegraph
and picture offices known in Pera and
elsewhere by the non- German populace as
sacs de mensonges, and which flooded the
whole of the East with waggon loads of
pamphlets in every conceivable tongue — in
fact these, with guns and ammunition,
formed the chief load of the bi-weekly
" culture-bringing " Balkan train !

I will only cite the one example of the
far-famed Mario Passarge — a real Apache to
look at. With his friend Frobenius, the
10

146 TWO WAR YEARS

ethnographer and German agent, well known
to me personally from French West Africa
for his liking for absinthe and negro women
and his Teutonic brusqueness emphasised in
comparison with the kindly, helpful French
officials, as well as by hearsay from many
scandalous tales, Passarge undertook that
disastrous expedition to the Abyssinians
which failed so lamentably thanks to the
Italians, and then after its collapse came
to Turkey as special correspondent of the
Vossische Zeitung and managed to swindle
his way through Macedonia with a false
Italian passport to Greece, where he wrote
sensational reports for his wonderful news-
paper about the atrocities and low morale
of Sarrail's army — the same newspaper that
had made itself the laughing-stock of the
whole of Europe, and at the same time had
managed to get the German Government
to pursue for two years the shadow of a
separate peace with Russia, by publishing
a marvellous series of "Special Reports via
Stockholm," on conditions in Russia that
were nothing but a tissue of lies inspired
by blind Jewish hate; if a tithe of them

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 147

had been true, Russia would have gone
under long ago.

I need not repeat my own opinion on all
the machinations of the German Embassy,
but I will simply give you word for word
what a German Press agent in Constanti-
nople (I will mention no names) once said
to me : " It is unbelievable," he declared,
" what a mob of low characters frequent the
German Embassy now. The scum of the
earth, people who would never have dared
before the war to have been seen on the pave-
ments of Ayas-Pasha, have now free entry.
Any day you can see some doubtful-looking
character accosting the porter at the Em-
bassy, whispering something in his ear, and
then being ushered down the steps to where
the propaganda department, the news bureau,
has its quarters. There he gives wonderful
assurances of what he can do, and promises
to stir up some Mohammedan people for
the ' Djihad.' Then he waits a while in
the ante-room, and is finally received by
the authorities ; but the next time he comes
to the Embassy he walks in through the
well-carpeted main entrance, and requests

148 TWO WAR YEARS

an audience with the Ambassador or other
high official, and we soon find him comfort-
ably equipped and setting off on a ' special
mission ' as the confidential servant of the
German Embassy." But even the recog-
nition of these truths has not prevented
this journalist from eating from the crib
of the German Embassy I

I cannot leave this disagreeable subject
without making some mention of a type
that does more than anything to throw
light on the morale of this German pro-
paganda. Everyone in Constantinople
knows — or rather knew, for he has now
feathered his nest comfortably and departed
to Germany with his money — Mehmed Zekki
"Bey," the publisher and chief editor of
the military paper Die Nationalverteidigung
and its counterpart La Defense, published
daily in French but representative of Young
Turkish-G erman interests. Hundreds of those
who know Zekki also know that he used to
be called " Capitaine Nelken y Waldberg."
Fewer know that " Nelken " alone would
have been more in accordance with fact.

I will relate the history of this individual,

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 149

as I know it from the mouths of reliable
informants — members of the Embassy and
the Consulate. Nelken, a Rumanian Jew,
a commercial traveller or some such, had been
several times in prison for bankruptcy and
fraud, and at last fled from Rumania. He
took refuge in the Turkish capital, where
he continued his business and married a
Greek wife. Here again he became bankrupt,
as is only too clear from the public notice
of restoration in the Constantinople news-
papers in summer 1916, when his lucrative
political activity as the champion of Krupp's,
of the German cause and " the holy German
war," from both the pan-Germanic and the
pan-Islamic standpoints, provided him with
the wherewithal to pay off his former dis-
reputable debts.

To go back to his history — with money
won by fraud in his pocket, he deserted his
wife and went off, no doubt having made a
thorough and most professional study of the
subject in the low haunts of Pera, as a white-
slave trader to the Argentine, and there
— I rely for my information on an official
of the German Consulate in Pera — set up

150 TWO WAR YEARS

as proprietor of a brothel in Buenos Ayres.
Then, as often happens, the Argentine
special police took him into their service,
thinking, no doubt, on the principle of "setting
a thief to catch a thief," that he would have
special experience for the post. Grounds
enough there for him to add on the second
name on his falsified passport "Nelkeny Wald-
berg " and to call himself in Eiu-ope a "Capi-
taine de la Gendarmerie" from the Argentine!

From there he went to Cairo and edited a
little private paper called Les Petites Nouvelles
Egyptiennes. For professional blackmail he
was sentenced to one year's imprisonment,
but unfortunately only in contumaciam,
for he had already fled the country, not,
however, before he had been publicly
smacked on the face in the "Flasch" beer
garden without dema,nding satisfaction as an
" Argentine General " should — a perform-
ance that was later repeated in every detail
in Toklian's Restaurant in Constantinople.

He told me once that he had been
sentenced in this way because', on an under-
standing with the then German Diplomatic
Agent in Cairo, von Miquel, he had attacked

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 151

Lord Cromer's policy sharply in his paper, and
that it was his patron von Miquel who had
given him the timely hint to leave Egypt. I
will leave it to one's imagination to discover
how much truth there was in this former
brothel-keeper's connection with official Ger-
man " world -politics " and high diplomacy.
From what I have seen personally since, I
believe that Zekki, alias Nelken, was prob-
ably speaking the truth in this case, although
it is certainly a fact that in German circles in
Cairo at that time it was generally under-
stood that ordinary blackmail had been the
reason of his sentence to imprisonment.

Nelken then returned to Constantinople
and devoted himself with unflagging energy
to his previous commercial activities. He
turned to the Islam faith and became a
citizen of the Ottoman Empire because he
found it more profitable so to do, and could
thus escape from his former liabilities.
Then in spite of lack of means, he managed
to found a military newspaper, which, how-
ever, soon petered out. Nelken became
Mehmed Zekki and a journalist, and of
course called himself "Bey."

152 TWO WAR YEARS

Up to this point the history of this
individual is nothing but a characteristic
extract from life as it is lived by hundreds
of rogues in the East. But now we come to
something which is almost unbelievable and
which leads me to give credence to his
version of his relations with von ^Miquel,
which after all only shows more clearly than
ever that German " world-politics " are not
above making use of the scum of the earth
for their intrigues. In full knowledge of
this man's whole black past — as Dr. Weber
of the German Embassy himself told me —
the G^erman Embassy with the sanction of
the Imperial Government (this I know
from letters Zekki showed me in great glee
from the Foreign Office and the War Office)
appointed this fellow, whom all Pera said
they would not touch with gloves on or
with the tongs, to be their confidential
agent with a large monthly honorarium
and to become a pillar of " the German
cause " in the East. And it could not
even be said in extenuation that the man
had any great desire or any wonderful
vocation to represent Germany, for — as the

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 153

Embassy official said to me — " We knew
that Zekki was a dangerous character and
rather inclined to the Entente at the out-
break of war, so we decided to win him over
by giving him a salary rather than drive
him into the enemy's camp." So it simply
comes to this, that Germany buys a bankrupt,
a blackmailer, a procurer, a brothel-keeper
with cash to fight her "Holy War " for her !
As publisher of the Defense Zekki received
a large salary from Germany, one from
Austria, afterwards cut down not from any
excess of moral sense, but simply from excess
of economy, and a very considerable sum
from Krupp's. As representative of German
interests he did all he could to propitiate
the Young Turks by the most fulsome
flattery, and more recently he was pushing
hard to get on the Committee of Union
and Progress. But the Turks jibbed at what
the German Embassy had accepted with
equanimity — seeing Zekki " Bey " moving
about their sacred halls with the most impos-
ing nonchalance and condescension. Zekki
himself once complained to me bitterly that in
spite of his having presented Enver Pasha

154 TWO WAR YEARS

with a valuable clock worth eighty Turkish
pounds which Enver had acfcepted with
pleasure, he would not even answer a written
request from Zekki craving an audience with
him. (This, incidentally, is a most excellent
example of the working of Enver's mind, a
megalomaniac as greedy as he was proud.)

The military director of the Turkish Press
said to me once : " We are only waiting for
the first ' gaffe ' in his paper to get this
filthy creature hunted out of his lair," and
one day when through carelessness a small
uncensored and really quite harmless mili-
tary notice appeared in print (everything
is submitted to the censor), the Turkish
Government gave it short shrift indeed, and
banned sine die this " Ottoman " paper
which lived by Krupp and German trade
money, and had become an advocate of the
German Embassy, because it was paid in good
solid cash for it. The paper was replaced by
a new one in Turkish hands, called Le Soir.

I could go on talking for ages from most
intimate personal knowledge about this
man, superb in his own way. His doings
were not without a certain comic side

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 155

which amused while it aggravated one. I
could mention, for example, his great
lawsuit in Germany in 1916, in which he
brought an accusation of libel against some
German who had called him a blackmailer
and a " ticket-of -leave " man. He managed
to win the lawsuit — that is, the defenders had
to pay a fine of twenty marks, because the
evidence brought against Zekki could not be
followed up to Egypt on account of England's
supremacy on the sea, and also no doubt
because the interests of Krupp and the
German Embassy could not have this
cherished blossom of German propaganda
disturbed ! So for him at any rate the lack
of " freedom of the seas " he had so often
railed against in his leading articles was a
very appreciable advantage.

The last time I remember seeing the
man he was engaged in an earnest tete-a-tete
about the propagation of German political
interests by means of arms with the Na-
tionalist Reichstag deputy, Dr. Streesemann,
a representative of the German heavy
goods trade and of German jingoism
who had hastened to Constantinople for the

156 TWO WAR YEAKS

furtherance of German culture. Most signi-
ficantly, no doubt in remembrance of his
days in Buenos Ayres, Zekki had chosen
for this interview the most private room
of the Hotel Moderne, a pension with a
champagne bar; and the worthy repre-
sentative of the German people, probably
nothing loth to have a change from his
eternal "Pan-German" diet, accepted his
invitation with alacrity. I followed the two
gentlemen to make my own investigations,
and I certainly got as much amusement,
although in a different sense, as one usually
does in such haunts. It was really most
entertaining to watch Nelken the ex-Jew
and Young Turk, with his fez on his head,
nodding jovially to all the German officers
at the neighbouring tables, and settling the
affairs of the realm with this Pan-German
representative of the people.

I trust my readers will forgive me if, in
spite of the distaste I feel at having to write
this unsavoury chapter about German Press
representatives and those in high diplomatic
authority who commission them, I relate
one more episode of a like character before I

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 157

close. One of these writers employed in the
service of the German Embassy had done
one of his female employees an injury which
cannot be repeated here. His colleague —
out of professional jealousy, the other said —
gave evidence against him under oath at
the German Consulate, and the other brought
a charge of perjury against him. The Ger-
man Consulate, in order not to lose such a
trusty champion of the German cause for
a trifle like the wounded honour of a mere
woman — an Armenian to boot ! — simply sup-
pressed the whole case, although all Pera
was speaking about it.

Against this we have the case later on of
a German journalist, most jealous of German
interests, who had a highly important
document stolen out of his desk with false
keys by one of his clerks in the pay of the
Young Turkish Committee. The document
was the copy of a very confidential report
addressed to high official quarters in Ger-
many, in which there were some rather more
uncomplimentary remarks about Enver and
Talaat than appeared in the version for
public consumption. An Embassy less no-

158 TWO WAR YEARS

toriously cowardly than the German one
would simply have shielded their man in
consideration of the fact that the report
was never meant for publication and of the
reprehensible way it had been stolen and
made public. But our chicken-hearted di-
plomats allowed him to be dismissed in
disgrace by the Turks, and so practically
gave their official sanction to the meanest
Oriental methods of espionage.

I have, however, now come to the con-
clusion from information I have received
that German cowardice in this case probably
had a background of hypocrisy and malice,
for this same journalist had spoken with
remarkable freedom, not indeed as a pro-
Englander, but in contrast to German and
Turkish narrow-mindedness, of how well he
had been treated by the English authorities,
and particularly General Maxwell in the
exercise of his profession in Cairo, where he
had been allowed for fully five weeks after
the outbreak of war to edit a German
newspaper. (I have seen the copies my-
self and wondered at the almost incredible
liberality of the English censorship .) Instead

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 159

of being sent to Malta he had been treated
most fairly and kindly and given every
opportunity to get away safely to Syria.
Of course the narration of events like these
was rather out of place in our " God
Punish England " time, and it was no doubt
on account of this, apart from all cowardice,
that the German Embassy made their fine
distinctions between personal and political
morality in the case of their Press repre-
sentative.

We have spoken of German propaganda
for the " Holy War," as carried out by
individuals as well as by pamphlets and the
Press. The Turkish capital saw a very
appreciable amount of this in the shape of
wandering adventurers and printed paper.
Several thousand Algerian, Tunisian, French
West African, Russian Tartar, and Turkestan
prisoners of war of Mohammedan religion
from the German internment camps were
kept for weeks in Pera and urged by the
German Government in defiance of all inter-
national law to join the " Djihad " against
their own rulers.

They were told that they would have the

160 TWO WAR YEARS

great honour of being presented to the Caliph
in Stamboul ; as devout Mohammedans
they could of course not find much to object
to in that. A wonderfully attractive picture
was painted for them of the delights of
settling in the flourishing lands of the East,
and living free of expense instead of starving
in prison under the rod of German non-
commissioned ofiicers till the far-distant
conclusion of peace. One can well imagine
how such marvellous conjuring tricks would
appeal to these poor fellows.

They have repeatedly told me that they
had been promised to be allowed to settle
in Turkey without any mention being made
of using them again as soldiers. But once
on the way to Constantinople there was
no further question of asking them what
their opinion was of what was being done
to them. They were simply treated
as Turkish voluntary soldiers and sent off
to the Front, to Armenia, and the Irak.
How far they were used as real front-line
soldiers or in service behind the lines I do
not know; what I do know is that they
left Constantinople in as great numbers as

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 161

they came from Germany, armed with rifles
and fully equipped for service in the field.
One can therefore guess how many of them
became " settlers " as they had been pro-
mised. Several days running in the early
summer of 1916 I saw them being marched
off in the direction of the Haidar-Pasha
station on the Anatolian Railway. They
were headed by a Turkish band, but on not
one single face of all these serried ranks did
I see the slightest spark of enthusiasm,
and the German soldiers and officers escort-
ing each separate section were not exactly
calculated to leave the impression with the
public that these were zealots fighting volun-
tarily for their faith who could not get fast
enough out to the Front to be shot or hanged
by their former masters 1

In her system of recruiting in the newly
founded kingdom of Poland, Germany de-
monstrated even more clearly of what she
was capable in this direction.

11

CHAPTER VII

Young Turkish nationalism — One-sided abolition of capitu-
lations — Anti-foreign efforts at emancipation — Aboli-
tion of foreign languages — German simplicity — ^The
Turkifioation of commercial lite — Unmistakable ia»
tellectual improvement as a result of the war — Trade
policy and customs tariff — ^National production — The
founding of new businesses in Turkey — Germany
supplanted — German starvation — Capitulations or full
European control ? — The colonisation and forcible
Turkification of Anatolia — " The properties of persons
who have been transported elsewhere " — The " Mo-
hadjirs " — Greek persecutions just before the Great
War — The " discovery " of Anatolia, the nucleus of
the Ottoman Empire — Turkey finds herself at last —
Anatolian dirt and decay — ^The " Greater Turkey " and
the purely Turkish Turkey — Cleavage or concentra-
tion ?

From the Germans we now turn again to
the Turks, to try to fathom the exact
mentality of the Young Turks during the
great war, and to discover what were the
intellectual sources for their various acti-
vities.

To give a better idea of the whole position

162

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 163

I will just preface my remarks by stating
a few of the outstanding features of the
present Young Turkish Government and
their dependents. Their first and chief
characteristic is hostility to foreigners, but
this does not prevent them from making
every possible use of their ally Germany, or
from appropriating in every walk of life
anything European, be it a matter of technical
skill, government, civilisation, that they
consider might be profitable. Secondly they
are possessed of an unbounded store of
jingoism, which has its origin in Pan-Turkism
with its ruling idea of " Turanism." Pan-
Turkism, which seems to be the governing
passion of all the leading men of the day,
finds expression in two directions. Out-
wardly it is a constant striving for a " Greater
Turkey," a movement that for a large part
in its essence, and certainly in its territorial
aims, runs parallel with the " Holy War " ;
inwardly it is a fanatical desire for a general
Turkification which finds outlet in political
nationalistic measures, some of criminal
barbarity, others partaking of the nature
of modern reforms, beginning with the

164 TWO WAR YEARS

language regulations and " internal colonisa-
tion " and ending in the Armenian persecu-
tions.

It is worthy of note that of the two intel-
lectual sources of the "Holy War," namely
Turanism — which one might reverse and
call an extended form of Old-Turkism — and
Pan-Islamism, the men of the " Committee
of Union and Progress " have only made
logical though unsuccessful use of the former,
although theoretically speaking they recog-
nise the value of the latter as weU. While
Turkish race-fanaticism, which finds prac-
tical outlet in Turanist ideas, is still the
intellectual backbone of official Turkey to-day
and has to be broken by the present war,
the Young Turkish Islam policy is already
completely bankrupt and can therefore be
studied here dispassionately in all its aspects.
We propose to treat the matter in some
detail.

All Neo-Turkish nationalistic efforts at
emancipation had as first principle the
abolition of Capitulations. The whole Young
Turkish period we have here under review
is therefore to be dated from that day,

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 165

shortly before Turkey's entry into the wax,
when that injunction was flung overboajd
which Europe had anxiously placed for the
protection of the interests of Europeans on
a State but too little civilised. It was
Turkey herself that did this after having
curtly refused the Entente offer to remove
the Capitulations as a reward for Turkey's
remaining neutral. Germany, who was
equally interested in the existence or non-
existence of Capitulations, never mentioned
this painful subject to her ally for a very
long time, and it was 1916 before she
formally recognised the abolition of Capitu-
lations, long after she had lost all hold on
Tiirkey in that direction.

As early as summer 1915 there were clear
outward indications in the streets of Con-
stantinople of a smouldering Nationalism
ready to break out at any moment. Turkey,
under the leadership of Talaat Bey, pursued
her course along the weU-trodden paths, and
the first sphere in which there was evidence
of an attempt at forcible Turkification was
the language. Somewhere towards the end
of 1915 Talaat suddenly ordered the removal

166 TWO WAR YEARS

of all French and English inscriptions,
shop signs, etc., even in the middle of
European Pera. In tramcars and at stop-
ping-places the French text was blocked out ;
boards with public police warnings in French
were either removed altogether or replaced
by unreadable Turkish scrawls; the street
indications were simply abolished. The au-
thorities apparently thought it preferable
that the Levantine public should get into
the wrong tramcar, should break their legs
getting out, pick flowers in the parks and
wander round helplessly in a maze of un-
named streets rather than that the spirit
of forcible Turkification should make even
the least sacrifice to comfort.

Of the thousand inhabitants of Pera, not
ten can read Turkish ; but under the pressure
of the official order and for fear of brutal
assault or some kind of underhand treat-
ment in case of non-compliance, the inhabi-
tants really surpassed themselves, and before
one could turn, all the names over the
shops had been painted over and replaced
by wonderful Turkish characters that looked
like decorative shields or something of the

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 167

kind painted in the red and white of the
national colours. If one had not noted
the entrance to the shop and the look of
the window very carefully, one might wander
helplessly up and down the Grand Rue de
Pera if one wanted to buy something in a
particular shop.

But the German, as simple-minded as
ever where political matters were concerned,
was highly delighted in spite of the extra-
ordinary difficulty of communal life.
" Away with French and English," he would
shout. " God punish England ; hurrah,
our Turkish brothers are helping us and
favouring the extension of the German
language ! "

The answer to these pan-German expan-
sion politicians and language fanatics, whose
spiritual home was round the beer-tables of
the " Teutonia," was provided by a second
decree of Talaat's some weeks later when all
German notices had to disappear. A few,
who would not believe the order, held out
obstinately, and the signs remained in Ger-
man till they were either supplemented in
1916, on a very clear hint from Stamboul,

168 TWO WAR YEARS

by the obligatory Turkish language or later
quite supplanted. It was not till some time
after the German had disappeared — and
this is worthy of note — that the Greek signs
ceased to exist. Greek had been up to
that time the most used tongue and was the
commercial language of the Armenians.

Then came the famous language regula-
tions, which even went so far — ^with a year
of grace granted owing to the extraordinary
difficulties of the Turkish script — as to
decree that in the offices of all trade under-
takings of any public interest whatsoever,
such as banks, newspapers, transport agen-
cies, etc., the Turkish language should be
used exclusively for book-keeping and any
written communication with customers. One
can imagine the " Osmanic Lloyd " and the
" German Bank " with Turkish book-keeping
and Turkish letters written to an exclusively
European clientele 1 Old and trusty em-
ployees suddenly found themselves faced
with the choice of learning the difficult
Turkish script or being turned out in a year's
time. The possibility — indeed, the necessity
— of employing Turkish hands in European

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 169

businesses suddenly came within the range of
practical politics — and that was exactly
what the Turkish Government wanted.

The arrangement had not yet come into
operation when I left Constantinople, but
it was hanging like the sword of Damocles
over commercial undertakings that had
hitherto been purely German. Optimists
still hoped it never would come to this pass
and would have welcomed any political-
military blow that would put a damper on
Turkey's arrogance. Others, believing firmly
in a final Turkish victory, began to learn
Turkish feverishly. Be that as it may, the
new arrangements were hung up on the
walls of all offices in the summer of 1916
and created confusion enough.

Many other measures, which I need scarcely
mention here, for the systematic Turkifica-
tion of commercial life and public inter-
course, followed hard on this first bold step.
In spite of the ever-growing number of
German officials in the different ministries,
partly foisted on the Turkish Government
by the German authorities, partly gladly
accepted for the moment because the Turks

170 TWO WAR YEARS

had still much to learn from German or-
ganisation and could profit from employing
Germans, in spite of the appointment of a
number of German professors to the Turkish
University of Stamboul (who, however, as a
matter of fact, like the German Government
officials, had to wear the fez and learn
Turkish within a year, and besides roused
most unfavourable and anti-German com-
ment in the newspapers), it was soon per-
fectly evident to every unbiased witness
that Germany would find no place in a
victorious Turkey after the war if the
" Committee of Union and Progress " did
not need her. Some sort of light must
surely have broken over the last blind
optimism of the Germans in the course of
the summer of 1916.

Hand in hand with the nationalistic
attempt to coerce European businesses into
using the Turkish language there went
more practical attempts to turkify all the
important branches of commerce by the
founding of indigenous organisations and
the introduction of reforms of more material
content than those language decrees. These

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 171

efforts, in spite of the enormous absorption
of all intellectual capabilities and energies
in war and the clash of arms, were ex-
pressed with a truly marvellous directness
of aim, and, from the national standpoint,
a truly commendable magnificence of con-
ception.

This latter has indeed never been lacking
as a progressive ethnic factor in Turkish
politics. The Turks have a wonderful un-
derstanding, too, of the importance of social
problems, or at least, as a sovereign people,
they feel instinctively what in a social con-
nection will further their sovereignty. The
war with its enormous intellectual activity
has certainly brought all the political and
economic resources of the Turks — including
the Young Turkish Government — to the
highest possible stage of development, and
we ought not to be surprised if we often
find that measures, whether of a beneficent
or injurious character, are characterised by
modern exactness, clever technicality, and
thoroughness of conception. Without antici-
pating, I should just like to note here how
this change appears to affect the war. No one

172 TWO WAR YEARS

can doubt that it will enormously intensify
zeal in the fight for the existence of the
Turkey of the future, freed from its jin-
goistic outgrowths, once more come to its
senses and confined to its own proper
sphere of activity, Anatolia, the core of
the Empire. But, on the other hand, iron
might and determined warfare against this
misguided State are needed to root out
false and harmful ideas.

If, after this slight digression, we glance
for a moment at the practical measures for
a complete Turkification of Turkey, the
economic efforts at emancipation and the
civic reforms carried through, we find first
of all that the new Turkey, when she had
thrown the Capitulations overboard, then
proceeded to emancipate herself completely
from European supervision in the realm of
trade and commerce.

A very considerable step in advance in
the way of Turkish sovereignty and Turkish
economic patriotism was the organisation
and — since September 1916 — execution of
the neo-Turkish autonomic customs tariff,
which with one blow gives Turkish finances

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 178

what the Government formerly managed to
extract painfully from the Great Powers
bit by bit, by fair means or foul, at intervals
of many years, and which with its hard-
and-fast scale of taxes — ^which there appears
to be no inclination in political circles at
the moment to njodify by trade treaties I —
means an exceedingly adequate protection of
Turkey's national productions, without any
reference whatever to the export interests
of her allies, and is a very strong induce-
ment to the renaissance of at any rate
the most important national industries.
The far-flung net of the " Djemiet " (whose
acquaintance we have already made in
another connection), that purely Turkish
commercial undertaking with Talaat Bey
at its head, regulating everything as it did,
taking everything into its own hands, from
the realising of the products of the Ana-
tolian farmers (and incidentally bringing it
about that their ally Germany had to pay
heavily and always in cash, even although
the Government itself owed millions to
Germany and got everything on credit from
flour out of Rumania to paper for theii

174 TWO WAR YEARS

journals) to the most difficult rationing of
towns, forms a foundation for the nationalis-
ing of economic life of the very greatest
importance.

The establishment of purely Turkish trade
and transport companies, often with pen-
sioned Ministers as directors and principal
shareholders, and the new language regula-
tions and other privileges will soon cut
the ground away from under the feet of
European concerns. Able assistance is
given in this direction by the Tanin and the
Hilal (the " Crescent "), the newly founded
" Committee " paper in the French language
(when it is a question of the official in-
fluencing of public opinion in European and
Levantine quarters, exceptions can be made
even in language fanaticism !), in which a
smes of articles invariably appear at the
founding of each new company praising
the patriotic zeal of the founders.

Then again there are the increasingly
thinly veiled efforts to establish a purely
Turkish national banking system. Quite
lately there has been a movement in favour
of founding a Turkish National Bank with

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 175

the object of supplanting the much-hated
" Deutsche Bank " in spite of the credit it
always gives, and that international and
preponderatingly French institution, the
" Banque Imperiale Ottomane," which had
already simply been sequestrated without
more ado.

The Turks have decided, too, that the
mines are to be nationalised, and Turkish
companies have already been formed, with-
out capital it is true, to work the mines
after the war. The same applies to the
railways — in spite of the fine German plans
for the Baghdad Railway.

All these wonderful efforts at emancipa-
tion are perfectly justified from the patriotic
point of view, and are so many blows dealt
at Germany, who, quite apart from Rohr-
bach's Weltpolitik, had at least hoped to
find a lucrative field of privileged com-
mercial activity in the country of her close
and devoted allies the Turks. It is of
supreme significance that while the war is
still at its height, while the Empire of the
Sultan is defending its very existence at the
gates of the capital with German arms and

176 TWO WAE YEARS

German money, there is manifested with
the most startling clearness the failure of
German policy, the endangering of all those
German " vital interests " in Turkey which
according to Pan-German and Imperialistic
views were one of the most important
stakes to be won by wantonly letting loose
this criminal war on Europe.

No doubt many a German was only too
well aware of the fact that in this Turk^
suddenly roused by the war all the ground
had been lost that he had built on with
such profit before, and many an anxious
face did one see in German circles in Con-
stantinople. I need not tarry here over
the drastic comments I heard from so many
German merchants on this subject. They
show a most curious state of mind on the
part of those who had formerly, in their
quest for gain and nothing but gain, profited
in true parasitical fashion from the financial
benefits of the Capitulations and had seen
nothing but the money side of this arrange-
ment, which was, after all, entered into for
other purposes. It was no rare thing and
no paradox to find a German company

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 177

director say, as I heard one say : " If things
went against Turkey to-day, I would wil-
lingly shoulder my gun, old man as I am."

No thinking man wUl expend too much
grief over the ruthless abolition of the Capitu-
lations, for they were unmoral and gave too
much opportunity to parasites and rogues,
while they were quite inadequate to protect
the interests of civilisation. They may have
sufi&ced in the time of Abdul-Hamid, who
was easily frightened off and was always
sensible and polite in his dealings with
Europe. For the Turkey of Enver and Talaat
quite other measures are needed. One must,
according to one's political standpoint, either
recognise and accept their nationalistic pro-
gramme of emancipation or combat it
forcibly by introducing full European con-
trol. And however willing one may be to
let foreign nations develop in their own
particular way and work out their own
salvation, one's standpoint with regard to a
State so behindhand, so fanatical, so mis-
guided as Turkey can be but one : the
introduction and continuation at all costs
of whatever guarantees the best protection
12

178 TWO WAR YEARS

to European civilisation in this land of
such importance culturally and historically.

Not only were Europeans, but the natives
themselves, affected by the series of measures
that one might class together under the
heading of Turkish Internal Colonisation
and the Nationalising of Anatolia. The
programme of the Young Turks was not
only a " Greater Turkey," but above all a
purely Turkish Turkey ; and if the former
showed signs of failing because they had
over-estimated their powers and their chances
in the war or had employed wrong methods,
there was nothing at all to hinder a sovereign
Government from striving all the more
ruthlessly to gain their second point.

The way this Turkification of Anatolia
was carried on was certainly not lacking in
thoroughness, like all their nationalistic
efforts. The best means that lay to hand
were the frightful Armenian persecutions
which affected a wonderful clearance among
the population. " The properties of persons
who have been transported elsewhere" with-
in the meaning of the Provisory Law were
either distributed free or sold for a mere

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 179

song to anyone who applied to the Committee
for them and proved themselves of the
same political persuasion or of pure Turkish
or preponderatingly Turkish nationality.
The rent was often fixed as low as 30 piastres
a month (about 55. Sd.) for officials and
retired military men. In the case of the
latter, Enver Pasha thought this an excellent
opportunity for getting rid, through the
medium of a kindly invitation to settle in
the Interior, of those who worried him by
their dissatisfaction with his system and
who might have prepared difficulties for
him. This " settling " was carried out with
the greatest zeal in the exceptionally flourish-
ing and fruitful districts of Brussa, Smyrna-
Aidin, Eskishehir, Adabazar, Angora, and
Adana, where Armenians and Greeks had
played such a great, and, to the Turks,
unpopular part as pioneers of civilisation.

The semi-official articles in the Tanin were
perfectly right in praising the local au-
thorities who in contrast with their former
indifference and ignorance "had now fully
recognised the great national importance of
internal colonisation and the settling of

180 TWO WAR YEARS

Mohadjirs (emigrants from the lost Turkish
territory in Bosnia, Macedonia, Thrace, etc.)
in the country." There is nothing to be
said in favour of the stupid, unprogressive
character of the Anatolian as contrasted
with the strength, physical endurance, intel-
ligence, and mobility of these emigrants.
The latter had also, generally speaking,
lived in more highly developed districts.

The great drawback of the Mohadjirs,
however, is their instability, their idleness
and love of wandering, their frivolity, and
their extraordinary fanaticism. As faithful
Mohammedans following the standard of
their Padishah and leaving the parts of the
country that had fallen under Christian rule,
they seemed to think they were justified
in behaving like spoilt children towards the
native population. They treated them with
ruthless disregard, they were bumptious,
and, if their new neighbours were Greek or
Armenian, they inclined to use force, a
proceeding which was always possible be-
cause the Government did not commandeer
their firearms and were even known to
have doled them out to stir up unrest. It

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 181

has occurred more than once that Mohadjirs
have crossed swords even with Turkish
Anatolians living peacefully in their own
villages. One can easily imagine how
much more the heretic giaurs ("Christian
dogs," " unclean men ") had to suffer at
their hands.

I should like to say a word here about
those Greek persecutions in Thrace and
Western Anatolia that have become notorious
throughout the whole of Europe. They
took place just before the outbreak of war,
and cost thousands of peaceful Greeks —
men, women, and children — their lives, and
reduced to ashes dozens of flourishing vil-
lages and towns. At the time of the
Sarajevo murder, I happened to be Staying
in the vilajet of Aidin, in Smyrna and
the Hinterland, and saw with my own
eyes such shameful deeds as must infuriate
anyone against the Turkish Government
that aids and abets such barbarity — from
old women being driven along by a dozen
Mohadjirs and dissipated soldiers to such
scenes as the smoking ruins of Phocaea.

Everyone at that time, at any rate in

182 TWO WAR YEARS

Smyrna, expected the immediate outbreak
of a new Graeco-Turkish war, and perhaps
the only thing that prevented it was the
method of procrastination adopted by both
sides. Both were waiting for equipment
and delayed so long that finally these
smaller clouds were swallowed up in the
mighty thunder-cloud gathering on the
European horizon. Only the extreme speed
with which one dramatic event followed
another, and my own mobilisation, which
precluded my writing anything of a political
nature, prevented me on that occasion from
giving my sinister impressions of Young
Turkish jingoism and Mohadjir brutality.
Even if I had been able to write what I
thought it is extremely doubtful if it would
ever have seen the light of day, for the
German papers were but little inclined, as I
had opportunity of discovering personally,
to say anything unpleasant about the Young
Turkish , Government, whose help they were
already reckoning on, and preferred rather
to behave in a most un-neutral manner and
keep absolutely silent about all the ill-
treatment and abuse that had been meted

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 183

out to Greece. But I remembered these
scenes most opportunely later, and that
visit of mine to .Western Anatolia was
certainly most useful in increasing my
knowledge of Young Turkish methods of
" internal colonisation."

But all the methods used are by no means
forcible. Attempts are now being made —
and this again is most significant for the
spirit of the newest Young Turkish era — to
gain a footing in the world of science as
opposed to force, and so to be able to carry
out their measures more systematically and
give them the appearance of beneficent
modern social reforms. So it comes about
that the Ttu-kish idea of penetrating and
" cleaning-up " Anatolia finds practical ex-
pression on the one hand in exterminating
and robbing the Christian population, while
on the other it inclines to efforts which in
time may work out to be a real blessing.
The common principle underlying both is
Nationalism.

Anatoha was suddenly " discovered." At
long length the Young Turkish Government,
roused intellectually and patriotically by

184 TWO WAR YEARS

the war and brought to their senses by this
terrible loss of human life entailed, sud-
denly realised the enormous national import-
ance of Anatolia, that hitherto much-neg-
lected nucleus of the Ottoman Empire.
Under the spiritual inspiration of Mehmed
Emin, the national poet of Anatolian birth
whose poems with their sympathy of out-
look and noble simplicity of form make
such a warm-hearted and successful appeal
to the best kind of patriotism, men have
begun since 1916, even in the circles of the
arrogant " Stamboul Effendi," to take an
interest in the kaba tiirk (uncouth Turk),
the Anatolian peasant, his needs and his
standard of civilisation. The real, needy,
primitive Tiu-k of the Interior has suddenly
become the general favourite.

A whole series of most remarkable lectures
was delivered publicly in the Tiirk Odjaghi,
under the auspices of the Committee, by
doctors, social politicians, and political
economists, and these were reported and
discussed at great length in all the Turkish
newspapers. Their subject was the incred-
ible destitution in Anatolia, the devastation

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 185

wrought by syphilis, malaria, and other
terrible dirt diseases, abortions as a result
of hopeless poverty, the lack of men as a
I'esult of constant military service in many
wars. Immediate and drastic reforms were
called for.

It is with the greatest pleasure that I
acknowledge that this first late step on the
way of improvement, this self-knowledge,
which appeals to me more thoroughly than
anything else I saw in Turkey, is probably
really the beginning of a happier era for
that beautiful land of AnatoUa, so capable
of development but so cruelly neglected.
For one can no longer doubt that the
Government has the real intention of carrying
out actual reforms, for they must be only
too well aware that the strengthening and
healing of Anatolia, the nucleus of the
Turkish race, is absolutely essential for any
Turkish mastery, and is the very first
necessity for the successful carrying out of
more far-reaching national exertions. With
truly modern realisation of the needs of the
case, directly after Dr. Behaeddin Shakir
Bey's first compelling lecture, different local

186 TWO WAR YEARS

government officials, especially the Vali of
the Vilajet of Kastamuni, which was no-
torious for its syphilis epidemics, made
unprecedented efforts to improve the terrible
hygienic conditions then reigning. Let us
hope that such efforts will bear fruit. But
this will probably only be the case to any
measurable extent later, after the war,
when Turkey will find herself really confined
to Anatolia, and will have time and strength
for positive social work.

In the meantime I cannot get rid of the
uneasy impression that this " discovery "
of Anatolia and zealous Turkish social
politics are no more than a cleverly worked
excuse on the part of the Government for
further measures of Turkification, and the
cloven hoof is unfortunately only too appar-
ent in all this seemingly noble effort on the
part of the Committee. One hears and sees
daily the methods that go hand in hand
with this official pushing into the foreground
of the great importance of the purely Turkish
elements in Anatolia — ^Armenian persecu-
tions, trickery, expropriations carried out
against Greeks, the yielding up of flourishing

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 187

districts to quarrelsome Mohadjirs. So long
as the Turkish Government fancy them-
selves conquerors in the great war, so long
as they pursue the shadow of a "Greater
Turkey," so long as Turkey continues to
dissipate her forces, she will not accomplish
much for Anatolia, in spite of her awakening
and her real desire for reform.

Finally, in this discovery of Anatolia, in
this desire to put an end to traditional
destitution, this recognition of the real
import of even the poorest, most primitive,
dullest peasant peoples in the undeveloped
Interior, so long as they are of Turkish race,
in this sudden flood of learned eloquence
over the needs and the true inner worth of
these miserable neglected Turkish peasants,
in this pressing demand for thorough reforms,
for the economic and social strengthening of
this element — measures which with the pre-
sent ruling spirit of jingoism in the Govern-
ment threaten to be carried through only
at the expense of the non- Turkish population
of Anatolia — we see very clear proof that
the neo-Turkish movement is a pure race
movement, is nothing but Pan-Turkism both

188 TWO WAR YEARS

outwardly and inwardly, and has very little
indeed to do with religious questions or with
Islam. The idea of Islam, or rather Pan-
Islamism, is a complete failure. This we
shall try to show in the following chapter.

CHAPTER VIII

Religion and race — The Islam policy of Abdul-Hamid and of
the Young Turks — Turanism and Pan-Islamism as
political principles — Turanism and the Quadruple
Alliance — Greed and race-fanaticism — ^Religious tradi-
tions and modern reforms — Reform in the law — A
modern Sheikh-ul-Islam — Reform and nationalisation
— The Armenian and Greek Patriarchates — The failure
of Pan-Islamism — The alienation of the Arabs —
Djemal Pasha's " hangman's policy " in Syria —
Djemal as a " Pro-French " — Djemal and Enver —
Djemal and Germany — His true character — The
attempt against the Suez Canal — Djemal's murderous
work nears completion — The great Arabian and Syrian
Separatist movement — The defection of the Emir of
Mecca and the great Arabian catastrophe.

In little-informed circles in Europe people
are still under the false impression that the
Young Turks of to-day, the intellectual and
political leaders of Turkey in this war, are
authentic, zealous, and even fanatical Mo-
hammedans, and superficial observers explain
all unpleasant occurrences and outbreaks of
Young Turkish jingoism on Pan-Islamic
grounds, especially as Turkey has not been

189

190 TWO WAR YEARS

slow in proclaiming her "Holy War." But
this conception is entirely wrong. The arti-
ficial character of the "D jihad," which was
only set in motion against a portion of the
" unbelievers," while the others became
more and more the ruling body in Turkey,
is the best proof of the untenability of this
theory. The truth is that the present
political regime is the complete denial of
the Pan-Islamic idea and the substitution
of the Pan- Turkish idea of race.

Abdul-Hamid, that much-maligned and
dethroned Sultan, who, however, towers head
and shoulders above all the Young Turks
put together in practical intelligence and
statesmanly skill, and would never have
committed the unpardonoble error of throw-
ing in his lot with Germany in the war and
so bringing about the certain downfall^ of
Turkey, was the last ruler of Turkey whb~
knew how to make use of Pan-Islamism as a
successful instrument of authority.

Enver and Talaat and all that breed of
jingoists on the Ittahad (Committee for
Union and Progress) were upstarts without
any schooling in political history, and so

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 191

all the more inclined to the doctrinal revolu-
tionism and short-sighted fanaticism of the
successful adventui^er. They were much too
limited to recognise the tremendous political
import of Pan-Islamism. Naturally once
they had conceived the idea of the " Djihad,"
they tried to make theoretical use of Pan-
Islamism ; but practically, far from extend-
ing Turkey's influence to distant Arabian
lands, to the Soudan and India, they simply
let Turkey go to ruin through their Pan-
Turkish illusions and their race-fanaticism.
Abdul-Hamid with his clever diplomacy
managed to maintain, if not the real sym-
pathies, at any rate the formal loyalty of
the Arabs and their solidarity with the rest
of the Ottoman Empire. It was he who
conceived the idea of that undertaking of
immense political importance, the Hedjaz
Railway, which facilitates pilgrimages to the
holy cities of Mecca and Medina and links
up the Arabian territory with the Turkish,
and he was always able to quell any disturb-
ances in these outlying parts of the Empire
with very few troops indeed. Nowadays
the Young Turkish Government, even if they

192 TWO WAR YEARS

had the troops to spare, might send a whole
army to the Hedjaz and they would be like
an island of sand in the midst of that stormy
Arab sea. The Arabs, intellectually far
superior to the Turks, have at last made up
their minds to defy their oppressors, and
all the Arabic-speaking parts of the Ottoman
Empire may be taken as already lost, no
matter what the final result of the present
war may be.

The Young Turks had scarcely come into
power when they began, with incredible lack
of tact, to treat the Arabs in a most super-
cilious manner, although as a matter of
fact the Arabs far surpassed them in intellect
and culture. They inaugurated a most
un-modern campaign of shameless blood-
sucking, cheated them of their rights, treated
them in a bureaucratic manner, and gener-
ally acted in such an unskilful way that
they finally alienated for ever the Arab
element as they had already done in the
case of the Armenians, the Greeks, and the
Albanians.

The ever-recurring disturbances in Yemen,
finally somewhat inadequately quelled by

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 193

Izzet Pasha, are still in the memory of
all. And later, directly after the recapture
of Adrianople during the Second Balkan
war, there was another moment of real
national rebirth when a reconciliation might
have been effected. The visit of a great
Syrian and Arabian deputation to the Sultan
to congratulate him over this auspicious
event should have provided an excellent
opportunity. I was staying some months
then in Constantinople on my way back
from Africa, and I certainly thought that
the half -broken threads might have been
knotted together again then if the Young
Turks had only approached the Arabs in
the right way. Even the great Franco-
British attack on Stamboul might have been
calculated to rouse a feeling of solidarity
among the Mohammedans living under the
Ottoman flag, and in the autumn and
winter of 1915-1916 Arab troops actually
did defend the entrance to the Dardanelles
with great courage and skill. But Arab
loyalty could not withstand for ever the
mighty flood of race- selfishness that pos-
sessed the Young Turks right from the
13

194 TWO WAR YEARS

moment of their entry into the war. The
enthusiasm of the Arabs soon disappeared
when Pan-Turkish ideas were proclaimed
all too clearly even to the inhabitants of
their own land, when an era of systematic
enmity towards the non-Tiu-kish parts of
the population was introduced and the
heavy fist of the Central Committee was
laid on the southern parts of the Empire
as well.

An attempt was made to bring the
ethnic principle of " Turanism " within
the region of practical politics, but it simply
degenerated into complete race-partiality
and was not calculated to further the ideas
of Pan-Islamism and the Turko-Arabian
alUance which were both of such importance
in the present war. It is this idea of Turan-
ism that lies at the back of the efforts being
made towards a purely Turkish Turkey, and
that of course makes it clear at once that
it must to a very large extent oppose the
idea of Pan-Islamism. It is true that both
principles may be made use of side by side
as sources of propaganda for the idea of
expansion and the policy of a "Greater

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 195

Turkey." Turanists peep over the crest of
the Caucasus down into the Steppes of the
Volga, where the Russian Tartars Hve, and
to the borders of Western Siberia and Inner
China, where in Russian Turkestan a race of
people of very close kinship live and where
very probably the Ottoman people had
their cradle. The Pan-Islamists want the
alliance of these Russian parts as well, but
from another point of view, and, above all,
they aim at the expansion of Ottoman rule
to the farthest corners of Africa and South-
West Asia, to the borders of negro territory,
and through Persia, Afghanistan, and Baluch-
istan to the foot of the Himalayas, while
on grounds of practical politics they strive
to abolish the old, seemingly insurmount-
able antithesis between Sonnites and Shiites
within the sanctuary of Islam.

The programme of the so-called " Djihad "
works on this principle, but goes much
farther. As well as stirring up against their
present rulers those parts of Egypt and
Tripoli which once owned allegiance to the
Sultan, and the Atlas lands, which are at
any rate spiritually dependent on the Caliph

196 TWO WAR YEARS

in Stamboul, the "Djihad" aims at intro-
ducing the spirit of independence into all
English, French, Itahan, and Russian Colonial
territory by rousing the Mohammedans and
so doing infinite harm to the eneniies, of
Turkey. It is most important, therefore,
always to differentiate between this "Holy
War " "stirring-up" propaganda from Senegal
to Turkestan and British India, and the
more territorial Pan-Islamism of the present
war, which goes hand in hand with the
efforts being made towards a " Greater
Turkey."

Instead of uniting all these principles skil-
fully for the realisation of a great end, making
sure of the Arab element by wisely restrain-
ing their selfish and exaggeratedly pro-
Turkish instincts and their despotic lust
for power, and so giving their programme
of expansion southwards some prospect of
succeeding, the Turks gave way right from
the beginning of the war to such a flood of
brutal, narrow-minded race-fanaticism and
desire to enrich the Turkish element at the
cost of the other inhabitants of the country,
that no one can reaUy be surprised at the

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 197

pitiable result of the efforts to secure a
Greater Turkey.

I should just like to give one small
example of the fanatical hatred that exists
even in high official circles against the
non-Turkish element in this country of
mixed race. The following anecdote will
give a clear enough idea of the ruling spirit
of fanaticism and greed. I was house-hunting
in Pera once and could not find anything
suitable. I approached a member of the
Committee and he said in solemn earnest :
"Oh, just wait a few weeks. We are all
hoping that Greece will declare war on us
before long, and then all the Greeks will
be treated as the Armenians have been.
I can let you have the nicest villa on the
Bosporus. But then," he added with gleam-
ing eyes, " we won't be so stupid as merely
to turn them out. These Greek dogs (kopek
rum) will have the pleasure of seeing us
take everything away from them — everything
— and compelling them to give up their
own property by formal contract."

I can guarantee that this is practically a
word-for-word rendering of this extraordinary

198 TWO WAR YEARS

outburst of fanaticism and greed on the part
of an otherwise harmless and decent man. I
could not help shuddering at such opinions.
Apparently it was not enough that Turkey-
was already at war with three Great Powers ;
she must needs seek armed conflict with
Greece, so that, as was the outspoken, the
open, and freely-admitted intention of official
persons, she might then deal with four
and a half millions of Ottoman Greeks,
practically her own countrymen, as she had
done with the unfortunate Armenians. In
face of such opinions one cannot but realise
how unsure the existence of the Young
Turkish State has become by its entry into
the war, and cannot but foresee that this
race-fanaticism will lead the nation to
political and social suicide. Can one imagine
a purely Turkish Turkey, when even the
notion of a Greater Turkey failed ?

Pessimists have often said of the Turkish
question that the Turks' principal aim in
determining on a complete Turkification of
Anatolia by any, even the most brutal,
means, is that at the conclusion of war they
can at least say with justification : " Ana-

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 199

tolia is a purely Turkish country and must
therefore be left to us." What they pro-
pose to bequeath to the victorious Russians
is an Armenia without Armenians !

The idea of " Turanism " is a most
interesting one, and as a widespread national-
istic principle has given much food for
thought to Turkey's ally, Germany. Turan-
ism is the realisation, reawakened by neo-
Turkish efforts at political and territorial
expansion, of the original race-kinship exist-
ing between the Turks and the many peoples
inhabiting the regions north of the Caucasus,
between the Volga and the borders of Inner
China, and particularly in Russian Central
Asia. Ethnographically this idea was per-
fectly justified, but politically it entails a
tremendous dissipation of strength which
must in the end lead to grave disappoint-
ment and failure. All the Turkish attempts
to rouse up the population of the Caucasus
either fell on unfruitful ground or went to
pieces against the strong Russian power
reigning there. Enver's marvellous con-
ception of an offensive against Russian
Transcaucasia led right at the beginning

200 TWO WAR YEARS

of the war to terrible bloodshed and de-
feat.

People in neutral countries have had
plenty of opportunity of judging of the
value of those arguments advanced by
Tatar professors and journalists of Russian
citiaenship for the " Greater-Turkish "
solution of the race questions of the Russian
Tatars and Turkestan, for these refugees
from Baku and the Caucasus, paid by the
Stamboul Committee, journeyed half over
Europe on their propaganda tour. The idea
of Turanism has been taken up with such en-
thusiasm by the men of the Young Turkish
Committee, and utilised with such effect for
purposes of propaganda and to form a
scientific basis for their neo-Turkish aims
and aspirations, that a stream of feeling in
favour of the Magyars has set in in Turkey,
which has not failed to demolish to a still
greater extent their already weakened en-
thusiasm for their German allies. And it
is not confined to purely intellectual and
cultural spheres, but takes practical form
by the Turks declaring, as they have so
often done in their papers in almost anti-

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 201

German articles about Turanism, that what
they really require in the way of European
technique or European help they much
prefer to accept from their kinsmen the
Hungarians rather than from the Germans.
To the great annoyance of Germany, who
would like to keep her heavy hand laid on
the ally whom she has so far guided and
for whom she pays, the practical results of
the idea of Turanism are already noticeable
in many branches of economic and com-
mercial life. The Hungarians are closely
allied to the Turks not only by blood but
in general outlook, and form a marked
contrast to Germany's cold and methodical
calculation in worming her way into Turkish
commercial life. After the war when Turkey
is seeking for stimulation, it will be easy
enough to make use of Hungarian influence
to the detriment of Germany. Turanist
ideas have even been brought into play to
establish still more firmly the union between
Turkey and her former enemy Bulgaria, and
the people of Turkey are reminded that the
Bulgars are not really Slavs but Slavic
Fino-Tartars.

202 TWO WAR YEARS

In proportion as the Young Turks have
brought racial politics to a fine art, so they
have neglected the other, the religious side.
More and more, Islam, the rock of Empire, has
been sacrificed to the needs of race-politics.
Those who look upon Enver and Talaat and
their consorts to-day as a freemasonry of
time-serving opportunists rather than as
good Mohammedans come far nearer the
truth than those who believe the idea spread
by ignorant globe-trotters that every Turk is
a zealous follower of Islam. It was not for
nothing that Enver Pasha, the adventurer
and revolutionary, went so far even in
externals as to arouse the stern disapproval
of a wide circle of his people. With true
time-serving adaptability to all modern pro-
gress — and who will blame him ? — he even
finally sacrificed the Turkish soldier's hal-
lowed traditional headgear, the fez. While
the kalpak, even in its laced variety,
could still be called a kind of field-grey
or variegated or fur edition of the fez,
the kabalak, called the " Enveriak " to
distinguish it from other varieties, is cer-
tainly on the way towards being a real sun-

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 203

helmet. Still more recently (summer 1916)
a black-and-white cap that looks absolutely
European was introduced into the Ottoman
Navy. The simple, devout Mohammedan
folk were most unwilling to accept these
changes, flying as they did direct in the face
of aU tradition. They may be externals of
but little importance, but in spite of their
insignificance they show clearly the ruling
spirit in official Young Turkish spheres.

This is in the harmless realm of fashion,
or at any rate military fashion, exactly the
same spirit as has caused the Turkish
Government to undertake since 1916 radical
changes in the very much more important
field of the law. Special commissions con-
sisting of eminent Turkish lawyers haye
been formed to carry through this reform
of law and justice, and they have been
hard at work ever since their formation.
What is characteristic and modern about
the reform is that the preponderating
role hitherto played by the Sheriat Law,
founded on the Koran and at any rate
semi-religious, is to be drastically curtailed
in favour of a system of purely Secular

204 TWO WAR YEARS

law, which has been strung together from
the most varied sources, even European
law being brought under contribution, and
the " Code Napoleon," which has hitherto
only been used in Mercantile law. This
of course leads to a great curtailment of
the activity and influence of the kadis and
muftis, the semi-religious judges, who have
now to yield place to a more secular system.
The first inexorable consequence of the
reform was that the Sheikh-ul-Islam, the
highest authority of Islam in the whole
Ottoman Empire, had to give up a large
part of his powers, and incidentally of his
income.

The changes made were so far-reaching,
and the spirit of the reform so modern, that,
in spite of the unshakeable power of Talaat's
truly dictatorial Cabinet which got it passed,
a concession had to be made to the public
opinion roused against the measure. The
form was kept as it was, but the Sheikh-ul-
Islam, Hairi Eff endi, refused — ostensibly — to
sign the decree and gave in his resignation.
Not only, however, was an immediate suc-
cessor found for him (MussaKiazim Eff endi),

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 205

who gave his signature and even began to
work hard for the reform, but — and this is
most significant for the relationship of the
Young Turks towards Islam — ^Hairi Effendi,
the same ex-Sheikh-ul-Islam who had pro-
claimed the Fetwa for the "Holy War,"
gave up his post without a murmur, and in
the most peaceable way, and remained one
of the principal pillars of the " Committee
for Union and Progress."

His resignation was nothing but a farce
to throw dust in the eyes of the aU-too-
trusting lower classes. After he had suc-
ceeded by this manoeuvre in getting the
reform of the law (which as a measure of
Turkification was of more consequence to
him now than his own sadly curtailed juristic
functions) accepted at a pinch by the
conservative population who still clung firmly
to Islam, he went on to play his great role
in the programme of jingoism. A " measure
of Turkification " we called it, for that is
what it amounts to practically, like every-
thing else the men of the " Ittihad " take
in hand.

I tried to give some hint of this within

206 TWO WAR YEARS

the limits of the censorship as long ago as
the summer of 1916 in a series of articles
I wrote for the Kolnische Zeitung. Here I
should like just to confine myself to one
point. Naturally the reform of the law
aimed principally at substituting these
newly formed pure Turkish conceptions for
the Arabian legal ideas that had been the
only thing available hitherto, (Everything
that this victorious Turkey had absorbed
and worked up in the way of civilised
notions was either Arabian or Persian or
of European origin.) It set to work now
in the sphere of family law, which hitherto
had been specially sacrosanct and only
subordinate to the religious Sheria, and
where tradition was strongest — not like
mercantile and maritime law, which had
been quite modern for a long time.

The reform went so far that it even tried
to introduce a kind of civil marriage, whereas
up tiU now all marriages, divorces, and
everything to do with inheritance had taken
place exclusively before religious officials. I
may just add that these newest reforms give
women no wider rights than they had

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 207

before. Perhaps this may be taken as an
indication that they have been conceived
far less from a social than from a political
point of view. What induced the Turkish
Government to introduce anything so en-
tirely modern as civil marriage in defiance
of age-old custom was more than probably
the desire to put an end to non-Turkish
Ottomans contracting marriages and making
arrangements about inheritance, etc., before
their own privileged, ethnically independent
organisations, and so to deal the final
death-blow to the Armenian and Greek
Patriarchates. If Family Law was modern-
ised in this way, there would not be the
faintest shadow of excuse left for the exist-
ence of these institutions which enjoyed a
far-reaching and influential autonomy.

The Armenian Patriarchate got short
shrift indeed. By dissolving the Patriarchate
in the Capital, breaking off all relations with
the Armenian headquarters in Etzmiadjin
and allowing only a very small remainder
of Patriarchate to be set up in Jerusalem
under special State supervision, the Turks,
as a logical sequence to the Armenian

208 TWO WAR YEARS

atrocities, simply dealt the death-blow in the
summer of 1916 to this important social
institution.

The Greek organisation, however, con-
ducted by a more numerous and, outwardly
at any rate, better protected people, offered
far more resistance, and could not be simply
wiped out with a stroke of the pen. A
direct attempt to suppress it was made
as early as 1910, but broke down entirely
in face of the firm attitude of the Greek
Patriarch in Constantinople. Now the
Young Turks seem to have come to the
conclusion that less drastic methods, begin-
ning on a juristic basis, may have a better
effect.

We have taken this one example in order
to get at the whole neo-Turkish method of
procedure. It consists in pushing forward,
if need be with greater delicacy than before
and on the round-about road of real modem
reforms, towards the one immovable goal :
the complete Turkification of Turkey. The
reform of the law, which we have treated
more exhaustively as an example of the
first rank, is typical of the Young Turkish

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 209

national tendency. Naturally it has its
use, too, as a means of further throwing off
the foreign political yoke. Through the
modernising of the whole Turkish legal
system, Europe is to be shown that the
Capitulations can be dispensed with.

The reform throws a vivid light, too, on
the inner relationship of the jingoistic, pure
Pan-Turkish leaders of present-day Turkey
towards religion. And it is perhaps not
generally known that at all the deliberations
of the " Committee " where the will of
Talaat, the uncrowned king of Turkey, is
alone decisive, the opinion of the Grand
Master of the Turkish Freemasons is always
listened to, and that he is one of the most
willing tools of the " Ittihad."

No, the members of the "Committee for
Union and Progress" have for a very long
time simply snapped their fingers at Islam if
it hindered them making use of and profiting
from^ their own subjects. They know very
well how to retain at least the outward
semblance of friendliness so long as Islam
does not directly cross the path of Pan-
Turkism. But the Armenian atrocities, in-
14

210 TWO WAR YEARS

stigated by Talaat, have as little to do with
religion, they are as exclusively the result
of pure race-fanaticism, professional jealousy,
and greed, as the hostile, devil-may-care
attitude towards Greece and the millions
of well-to-do Ottoman Greeks who are the
next troublesome competitors and suitable
victims of aggrandisement to be disposed
of after the Armenians, or as the terrible
persecutions against the highest class of
Syrians and Arabs pictured in Djemal
Pasha's famous paper. They are Turks,
pure Turks with the most narrow-minded
jingoistic point of view, and not broad-
minded Mohammedans, that sit on the
Committee in " Nur-el-Osmanieh " in Stam-
boul and make all these wonderful political
plans, from internal reforms and measures
of government which attempt to adapt
themselves to European technique by sacri-
ficing ancient traditions, to the hangman's
tactics employed against their own subjects.
Take the case of the Syrians and the
Arabs. The " Ittihad " clique, weltering in
a fog of Pan-Turkish illusion, were yet not
without anxiety with regard to the intel-

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 211

lectual and social superiority, to say nothing
of the political acumen, of these peoples
compared with the Turks. They had yielded
entirely to their brutal instincts of exter-
mination and suppression towards foreign
races, and the Germans had made no
attempt to curb them. They were, political
parvenus suddenly freed from the control
of the civilised Great Powers, and they did
not know how to make use of that freedom.
Perhaps they felt themselves already on
the edge of an abyss and were constrained
to snatch what they could while there was
yet time.

Is it any wonder, then, that the Turks
should throw over aU trace of decency
towards the Syrians and the Arabs once
they were sure that these peoples, who
regarded their oppressors with most justi-
fiable hatred, would refuse to have anything
to do with the " Holy War " of the Turanian
pseudo-Caliph ?

The last remnants of the traditional Pan-
Islamic esteem of their Arab neighbours,
already sadly shattered by the Young Turks'
ruthless policy towards them since 1909,

212 TWO WAR YEARS

were flung light-heartedly overboard by a
Government that knew they were to blame
for the Arab defection but thought they had
found a substitute that appealed more to
their true Asiatic character in these Turan-
ist dreams of expansion and measures of
Turkification. And while fanatical adven-
turers and money-grubbing deputies paid
by the easily duped German Embassy were
preaching a perfectly useless " Holy War "
on the confines of the Arabian territory of
the Turkish Empire, towards the part
occupied by the English, while Enver Pasha
continued to visit the holy places of Islam,
where he got a frosty enough reception,
although the wonderfully worded communi-
ques on the subject succeeded in blinding
the population to the true state of affairs,
" the hangman's policy " of Djemal Pasha,
the Commander of the Fourth Osmanic
Army, and Naval Minister, had been for
a long time in full swing in the old civilised
land of Syria against the best families
among the Mohammedan as well as the
Christian population. The whole civilised
world is laying up a store of accusations

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 213

of this kind against the Turks, and it is to
be hoped that a pubUc sentence will
be passed on these gentlemen of the
" Ittihad " on the conclusion of peace by
a combined court of Europeans and Ameri-
cans.

Here again the Young Turkish Govern-
ment assumed the existence of a widespread
conspiracy and a Syrian and Arabian
Separatist movement towards autonomy,
which was to free these lands from Turkish
rule and to be established under Anglo-
French protection. At the time of the
Armenian persecutions the Comimittee had
managed most cunningly to turn the whole
Armenian question to their own account
by publishing false official reports by the
thousand, accompanied by any number of
photographs of " bands of conspirators,"
the authenticity of which never has been
proved and never will be; indeed one can
only wonder where the Turkish Govern-
ment got them from.

In this case again there was no lack of
official printed com^mentaries on Djemal
Pasha's " hanging list," and any reader of

214 TWO WAR YEARS

the Journal de Beyrouth in war-time would
have had no difficulty in compiling it. It
is certainly not my intention to question
the existence of a Separatist movement to-
wards autonomy in Syria, but it was a
sporadic tendency only, and ought never
to have been made the excuse for the whole-
sale execution of highly respected and well-
born citizens who had nothing whatever
to do with the matter.

In the Young Turkish memorandum on
this act of spying and bloodshed, the pass-
ages most underlined ajid printed in the
boldest characters, the passages which,
according to official intention, were to justify
these frightful reprisals, form the most
terrible indictment ever brought against
Turkish despotism, and provide the most
complete proof of the truth of all the accusa-
tions made against the Turkish Govern-
ment by the ill-treated and oppressed Syrians
and Arabians. On anyone who does not
read with Young Turkish eyes the memor-
andum makes directly the opposite impres-
sion to what was intended. And even if
the Separatist movement had existed in

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 215

any greater extent — ^which was quite out
of the question owing to lack of weapons,
conflicting interests, the contrasts in the
people themselves, some of them Moham-
medan, some Christian, some sectarian, and
the impossibility of any kind of organisa-
tion under the stern discipline of Turkish
rule — ^the Turks would have most richly
deserved it and it would have been justified
by the thousands of brutalities inflicted by
the Old and Young Turkish regimes on the
highly civilised Arabian people and their
industrious, commercial neighbours, the
Syrians, who had always been much in-
fluenced by European culture. Anyone who
has once watched how the Committee in
Stamboul made a pretext of events on the
borders of Caucasia to exterminate a whole
people, including women and children, even
in Western and Central Anatolia and the
Capital, can no longer be in the least doubt
as to the methods employed by Djemal
Pasha, the " hangman " of Syrians and
Arabs, how grossly he must have exag-
gerated and mis-stated the facts to find
enough victims for him to be able to look on

216 TWO WAR YEARS

for a year and a half with a cigar in his
mouth — as he himself boasted — while the
flower of Syrian and Arabian youth, the
elite of society, and the aged heads of
the best families in the land were either
hanged or shot.

I should like to take the opportunity here
of giving a short description of Djemal
Pasha, who, according to Turkish ideas,
is destined still to play a great part
in Turkish polities. I should also like to
clear up a misunderstanding that seems
to exist in civilised Europe with regard to
him. There is still an idea abroad that
Djemal Pasha is pro-French, this man who
set out on his adventure against the Suez
Canal as " Vice-king of Egypt," and, after
he had been beaten there, settled in Syria
as dictator with unlimited power— even
openly defying the Central Government in
Constantinople when he felt piqued — so
that as commander of the Fourth Army
he could support the attempt against Egypt,
but principally to satisfy his murderous
instincts" Anyone who has seen this man
close at hand (whom a German journalist

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 217

belonging to the Berliner Tageblatt with
the most fulsome flattery once called one
of the handsomest men in Turkey) knows
enough. Small, thickset, a beard and a
pair of cunning cruel eyes are the most
prominent features of this face from which
everyone must turn in disgust who remem-
bers the " hangman's " part played by the
man.

It is extraordinary that he should still
pass as pro-French in many quarters, and
perhaps it is part of his slyness to preserve
this role. Djemal is not pro-French ; he
is only the most calculating of all the lead-
ing men of Turkey. He certainly had pro-
French tendencies, in the current meaning
of the word, before the war; that is, he
thought the interests of his country would
be best safeguarded against German mach-
inations for winning over the Young Turks
by taking advantage of Turkey's traditional
friendship for France. He was also against
Turkey's participation in the war on the
side of the Central Powers, and he was
furiously angry when the fleet which was
supposed to be under his control appeared

218 TWO WAR YEARS

against his will under the direction of the
German Admiral of the Goehen and Breslau
in the Black Sea.

But when the war actually broke out,
he very soon accommodated himself to the
new state of affairs. Instead of handing
in his resignation, he added to his naval
duties the chief command of the army
operating against Egypt, for Djemal's chief
characteristics were characterless oppor-
tunism and inordinate ambition. Suiting
his opinions to the facts of the case, he was
not long in advertising his pro-French feel-
ings again so that he might be popular with
the people of Syria. That of course did not
prevent him later on from carrying out
his " hangman's policy " against the Syrians
who were bound by so many social ties to
France. From that it is not diflBcult to
judge just how genuine his pro-French
feelings are !

The only genuine thing in his whole
attitude is his admitted deep hatred of
Germany and his personal animosity to-
wards the pro-German Enver Pasha, arising
partly from jealousy, partly from a feeling

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 219

of being slighted, and only concealed for
appearance' sake. During the war he has
often enough made very plain utterances
of his hatred of Germany, and it would
certainly betoken ill for German politics
in Turkey if Djemal Pasha succeeded in
obtaining a more active role in the Central
Government. So far the Minister for War
has managed to hold him at arm's length,
and Djemal has no doubt found it of advant-
age to wait for a later moment, and content
himself for the present with his actual
powerful position.

From his own repeated anti-German
speeches it has, however, been only too easy
to glean that his anti-German opinions and
actions are not the result of his being pro-
French, but of his being a jingoistic Pan-
Turk. He may simulate pro-French feelings
again and play them as the trump card in
his surely approaching decisive struggle with
Enver Pasha, when Enver's system has
failed ; Djemal will no doubt maintain
then that he foresaw everything, and that
he has always been for France and the
Entente. Everyone who knows his character

220 TWO WAR YEARS

is at any rate sure of one thing, and that
is that he will stop at nothing, even a rising
against the Central Government, if his am-
bitious opportunism should so dictate it.
It is to be hoped, however, that public
opinion among the Entente will not be
deceived as to his true character, and will
recognise that he is nothing more than a
jingoistic, greedy, ruthless Young Turkish
fanatic and one of the most cunning at
that. It would really be doing too much
honour to a man with a murderer's face
and a murderer's instinct to credit him
with honest sympathies for France.

Djemal's work is nearing fruition. His
cruel executions, his cynical breaking of
promises in Syria, have at any rate con-
tributed, along with other politically more
important tendencies which have been
cleverly utilised by England for the estab-
lishment of an Arabian Caliphate, towards
the decisive result that the Emir of Mecca
has revolted against the Turks. The Emir's
son and his great Arabian suite had to
pay a prolonged visit to Djemal at one
time, and it is evident that the brutal

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 221

execution of Arabian notables that he saw
then directly influenced his father's attitude.
The movement is bound to spread, and
slowly and surely it will roll on till it ends
in the full and perfect separation from
Turkey of all Arabic-speaking districts as
far as Northern Syria and the borders of
Southern Kurdistan. The so-called Separa-
tist movement, that Djemal tried to drown
in a sea of blood before it was well begun,
is now an actual fact.

In Egypt England has been seeing for
quite a long time the practical and favour-
able results of her success in founding the
Arabian Caliphate, She has now gained
practically absolute security for her rule
on the Nile, and she has even been able to
remove troops and artillery from the Suez
Canal to other fronts. The German dream
of an offensive against Egypt vanished
long ago; now even the last trace of a
German-Turkish attempt against the Canal
has ceased, and the English troops have
moved the scene of their operations to
Southern Palestine. While I write these
lines, there comes from the other side, from

222 TWO WAR YEARS

Arabian Mesopotamia, the news of the
recapture of Kut-el-Amara by British
troops. I should not hke to prophesy what
moral or political results the fall of Baghdad,
Medina, and Jerusalem will have for Turkish
rule ; possibly, nay probably, iron necessity,
the impossibility of turning back, the pressure
imposed by the German Allies — for Turkey
is fully under German military rule — may
weaken the direct results of even such
catastrophes as these. Bui^, in spite of all,
the hearts which beat to-day with high hopes
for the freedom of Great Arabia and autonomy
for Syria under Franco-English protection
will flame with new rapture, and in the
Turkish capital all grades of society will realise
that Ottoman power is on the decline.

Meantime Djemal Pasha is still occupied
in Syria raking in the property of the
murdered citizens and dividing it up among
his minions, the lease very often being
given over to commissions consisting of
individuals of extremely doubtful reputa-
tion. When he is not thus busily engaged,
he spends his time at the green table
playing poker. It is to be ardently hoped

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 228

that even this great organiser will soon
be at the end of his tether in Syria and
have to leave the country where he has
kinged it royally for two years. Then,
perhaps, the moment may come when things
are going so badly for the whole of Turkey
that Djemal will at last have the oppor-
tunity, in spite of the failure of his policy
in Syria, of measuring his military strength
against his hated enemy Enver in Stamboul.
That would be the beginning of the last
stage before the complete collapse of Turkey.

CHAPTER IX

Anti-war and pro-Entente feelings among the Turks —
Turkish pessimism about the war — How would Abdul-
Hamid have acted ? — A war of prevention against
BuBsia — Russia and a neutral Turkey — The agreement
about the Dardanelles — A peaceful solution scorned —
Alleged criminal intentions on the part of the Entente ;
the example of Greece and Salonika — Existence or non-
existence ? — German influence — Turkey stakes on the
wrong card — The results — The death of Prince Yussuf
Izzedin : murder or suicide ? — Enver and Talaat — The
" gentlemen " of the Committee.

There has been no lack of cross currents
against the war policy of the Young Turkish
Government. Ever since the entry of
Turkey into the war, there has been a
deeply rooted and unshakeable conviction
among all kinds and conditions of men,
even in the circles of the Pashas and the
Court — ^the people of Turkey take too little
interest in politics and are composed of
far too heterogeneous elements for there
to be anything in the nature of what
we call " public opinion " — ^that Turkey's

224

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 225

alliance with the Central Powers was a
complete mistake and that it can lead to
no good. It is of course known that since
the outbreak of war Turkey has not only
been under martial law and in a state of
siege, but that under the regime of a brutal
military dictatorship, with its system of
espionage, personal liberty has been practic-
ally null and void. Any expressions of
disapproval, therefore, or agitations against
the " Committee " are naturally only possible
in most intimate circles, and that with all
secrecy. Little or nothing of the true
opinions of this or that personage ever
trickles through to publicity, and so it
is utterly impossible, except from quite
detached symptoms, to get any proper
idea of what are the real thoughts and
feelings of those cultured Turks who do
not belong to the " Ittihad " and who have
no part in their system of pillage and aggran-
disement.

In spite of the limited information avail-
able it will be worth while, I think, to go
into these counter-streams a little more
fully. In pretty well every grade of society
15

226 TWO WAR YEARS

and among all nationalities in Turkey, there
is the conviction that the old Sultan Abdul-
Hamid would never have committed the
fateful error of declaring war against the
Entente and binding himself hand and
foot to Germany. In the case of Turkey's
remaining neutral, the Entente had form-
ally promised her territorial integrity ;
Turkey refused. She felt herself driven
to a war of prevention, principally through
fear of the power of Russia. The state-
ments made by those who agreed with
Enver Pasha and pushed for the war, that
Turkey in the case of non-participation
would be completely thrown on the mercy
of a victorious Russia and that Russia's
true aim in the war was the Dardanelles
and Constantinople, have never been
authenticated. There are still Turks, anti-
Russian Turks, who even admitted this
possibility, and yet believed the word of
the Entente — at any rate of the Western
Powers — and trusted to England's throw-
ing her weight into the scale against Russia's
plans of conquest, if Turkey remained
neutral. They saw and still see no necessity

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 227

for the Turkish Government to have entered
on a war of prevention.

Russia's aim was the Straits and Con-
stantinople — ^well and good. But Russia
would by hook or by crook have had to
come to a friendly agreement with Turkey
and could not have simply broken a definite
promise given by the combined Entente
to Turkey. It would have been quite
different if Russia had demanded Con-
stantinople from the Western Powers as
the price of her participation in the war
against Germany ; then, but only then, the
Entente would perhaps have had to come
to an agreement satisfying Russia on this
head. But Russia had quite other ideas,
and long before Turkey's entry into the
war and without any prospects of getting
Constantinople, she flung her whole weight
against Germany and Austria right at the
beginning of the war.

The treaty with regard to Constantinople
between the Western Powers and Russia
was not signed till six months after Turkey
declared war, and England would certainly
never have allowed Russia to encroach on

228 TWO WAR YEARS

a really neutral or benevolently neutral
Turkey. Then, but only then, there might
have been some foundation in fact for
the ideas one heard advanced by German-
Turkish illusionists who would still have
liked to believe thkt there was continual
dissension within the Entente, even long
after the official notification of the Anglo-
Russian treaty with regard to the Straits,
and by some even after the speech of the
Russian minister Trepoff, that the English
occupation of the islands at the entrance
to the Dardanelles, which could be made
into a second Gibraltar, aimed chiefly at
blocking the Straits and preventing Russia
from gaining undisturbed possession of Con-
stantinople. Specially optimistic people
even look to that chimerical antagonism
between Russia and England for the salva-
tion of Turkey, should Germany be finally
overcome.

Whether she liked it or not, then, Russia,
in order to gain the desired goal, would have
had to come to a friendly agreement with
Turkey, had the latter remained neutral.
And this goal would have been necessarily

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 229

limited, by the fact of Turkey's non-entry
on the enemy side, rather to the stoppage
of German Berlin-Baghdad efforts at ex-
pansion, the prevention of any strangulation
of the enormous Russian trade in the south
and desperate opposition to any attempt to
keep Russia away from the Mediterranean,
than to an attack on Turkey and her vital
interests. And who knows whether under
such an agreement, bound as it was to give
Russia certain liberties and privileges in
the Straits, Turkey also might not have got
much in exchange, at any rate on financial
lines, and might not also have obtained
permission at last to develop Armenia by
that west-to-east railway so long desired by
the Turks and so strongly opposed by the
Russians ?

Would the terrible bloodshed in the present
war, the complete economic exhaustion en-
tailed, and the risk of a doubtful outcome
of the fight for existence or non-existence
not have been far outweighed by the pros-
pect, in the case of a friendly agreement
with Russia, of seeing the orthodox cross
again planted on the Hagia Sophia, an

280 TWO WAR YEARS

international regime established in Con-
stantinople — with certain Russian privileges
and the satisfaction of certain Russian
moral demands, it is true, but otherwise
nothing to disturb Turkish life in Stamboul
or in any way prejudice Turkish prestige?
Even the prospect of having to raze the
forts on the Straits to the ground in order
to give free access from the Mediterranean,
or the necessity of having to inaugurate
a more humane and beneficent policy in
Armenia, perhaps with European supervision
over the carrying out of the reforms, woidd
surely have been preferable to the present
state of affairs. These would all have
ensured for Turkey a long period of peace,
capital wealth and intellectual and social
improvement, perhaps at the expense of a
momentary hurt to her feelings, — ^but these
had been far more severely wounded already,
as, for example, when she had to look
on helplessly while bit after bit of her
Empire was torn from her. It would
have been impossible for Russia to get
more than this from Turkey had she
remained neutral. Her sovereignty and

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 231

territorial integrity would have been com-
pletely guaranteed.

But Turkey thought she had to stake
all, her whole existence, on one card, and
she staked on the wrong one, as is recognised
now by thousands of intelligent Turks.
Believers in the war policy followed by the
Government make themselves hoarse main-
taining that if Russia had not gradually
overpowered a neutral Turkey to win Con-
stantinople completely, at any rate the
Entente would have finally forced her to
join their side ; in either case, therefore,
war was inevitable. They point to Salonika,
and, in face of all reason, maintain that the
Entente Powers would in all probability have
treated Turkey exactly as they treated
Greece. They forget that their geographical
position is entirely different, and would
have a very different effect on military
tactics. If Turkey had remained a benevo-
lent neutral, so would Bulgaria; or else
the whole of the Balkan States, from
Rumania and Bulgaria to Greece, would
have joined the Entente right at the be-
ginning. In either case there would have

232 TWO WAR YEARS

been no necessity at all for Turkey to join,
for what military obligations had she to fulfil?
The Entente would certainly never have
driven Turkey to fight, simply to get the
benefit of the Turkish soldiers available;
there is no truth whatever in the statements
circulated about unscrupulous compulsion
with this end in view.

The benefit for the Entente of Turkey's
benevolent neutrality would have been so
enormous that they would most certainly
have been content with that. Neither in
Germany nor in Turkey is there any doubt
whatever in military circles that it was
Turkey's entry into the war on the German
side and her blocking of the Straits, and so
preventing Russia from obtaining supplies
of ammunition and other war material, that
has so far saved the Central Powers. Had
Turkey remained neutral, constant streams
of ammunition would have poured into
Russia, Mackensen's offensive would have
had no prospect at all of success, and
Germany would have been beaten to all
intents and purposes in 1915. The Turks
do not scruple to let Germany feel that

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 233

this is so on every suitable or unsuitable
occasion.

The Entente would certainly never have
moved a finger to disturb Turkey's benevo-
lent neutrality and drive her into war, and
there would have been tremendous material
advantages for Turkey in such a neutrality.
Instead of being impoverished, bankrupt,
utterly exhausted, wholly lost, as she now
is, she might have been far richer than
Rumania has ever been. There is one
thing quite certain, and that is that Abdul-
Hamid would never have let this golden
opportunity slide of having a stream of
money pouring in on himself and his
country. And certainly Turkey would not
have lacked moral justification had she so
acted.

These considerations I have put forward
rather from the Turkish anti-war point of
view than from my own. They are opinions
expressed hundreds of times by thoroughly
patriotic and intelligent Turks who saw
how the ever more intensive propaganda
work of the German Ambassadors, first
Marschall von Bieberstein, then Freiherr

234 TWO WAR YEARS

von Wangenheim, gradually wormed its
way through opposition and prejudice, how
the German Military Mission in Constan-
tinople tried to turn the Russian hatred of
Germany against Turkey instead, how,
finally, those optimists and jingoists on the
" Committee," who knew as little about
the true position of affairs throughout the
world as they did of the intentions of the
Entente or the means at their own disposal,
proceeded to guide the ship of State more
and more into German waters, without any
reference to their own people, in return
for promises won from Germany of personal
power and material advantage. These were
those days of excitement and smouldering
unrest when Admiral von Souchon of the
Goeben and the Breslau, with complete lack
of discipline towards his superior, Djemal
Pasha, arranged with the German Govern-
ment to pull off a coup without Djemal's
knowledge — chiefly because he was itching
to possess the " Pour le M^rite " order —
and sailed off with the Turkish Fleet to
the Black Sea. (I have my information
from the former American Ambassador in

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 235

Constantinople, Mr. Morgenthau, who was
furious at the whole affair.) '

These were the days when Enver and Talaat
threw all ^their cards on the table in that
fateful game of Existence or Non-existence,
and brought on their country, scarcely yet
recovered from the bloodshed of the Balkan
War, a new and more terrible sacriJSce of
her manhood in a war extending over four,
and later five, fronts. The whole result of
this struggle for existence depended on final
victory for Germany and that was becoming
daily more doubtful; in fact, Ottoman
troops had at last to be dispatched by
German orders to the Balkans and Galicia.

Turkey had, too, to submit to the
ignominy of making friends with her very
recent enemy and preventing imminent
military catastrophe by handing over the
country along the Maritza, right up to the
gates of the sacred city of Adrianople, to
the Bulgarians. She had to look on while

* Djemal Pasha learnt the nevrs that Admiral ron
Souchon had bombarded Russian ports, and so made war
inevitable, one evening at the Club. Pale with rage, he
sprang up and said i " So be it ; but if things go wrong,
Souchon will be the first to be hanged."

236 TWO WAR YEARS

Armenia was conquered by the Russians;
while Mesopotamia and Syria, in spite of
initial successes, were threatened by English
troops ; while the " Holy War " came to
an untimely end, the most consecrated of all
Islam's holy places, Mecca, fell away from
Turkey, the Arabs revolted and the Caliph-
ate was shattered; while her population
in the Interior endured the most terrible
sufferings, and economic and financial life
tended slowly and surely towards complete
and hopeless collapse.

Not even yet, indeed now less than ever,
is there any general acceptance among the
people of the views held by Enver and
Talaat and their acolytes. Not yet do
intelligent, independent men believe the
fine phrases of those minions of the "Com-
mittee," who are held in leading strings by
these dictators partly through gifts of
money, office, or the opportunity to enrich
themselves at the expense of the people,
partly through fear of the consequences
should they revolt, or of those underhngs
who call themselves deputies and senators.
On the contrary, it is no exaggeration to

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 237

say that three-quarters of the intelligent
out-and-out Turkish male population — quite
apart from Levantines, Greeks, and Arme-
nians — and practically the entire female
population, who are more sensitive about
the war and whose hearts are touched more
deeply by its immeasurable suffering, have
either remained perfectly friendly to England
and France or have become so again through
terrible want and suffering.

The consciousness that Turkey has com-
mitted an unbounded folly has long ago
been borne in upon wide circles of Turks
in spite of falsified reports and a stringent
censorship. There would be no risk at all
in taking on a wager that in private con-
versation with ten separate Turks, in no
way connected with the "Committee," nine
of them will admit, as soon as they know
there is no chance of betrayal, that they
do not believe Turkey will win, and that,
with the exception of the much-feared
Russia, they still feel as friendly as ever
towards their present enemies. " Quoi
quHl arrive, c'est toujours la pauvre Turquie
qui va payer le pot cassi." ("Whatever

238 TWO WAR YEARS

happens, it's always poor Turkey that'll
have to pay the piper ") and " Nous avons
fait une grande gaffe " (" We have put our
foot in it ") were the kind of remarks
made in every single political discussion
I ever had in Constantinople — even with
Turks.

So much for the men, who judge with
their reason. What of the women ? The
one sigh of cultured Turkish women, up
to the highest in the land — ^who should have
a golden book written in their honour for
their readiness to help, their sympathy, and
humanity in this war — ^is : " When shall
we get rid of the Boches ? when will our
good old friends, the English and the French,
come back to us ? " Nice results, these, of
German propaganda, German culture,
German brotherhood of arms I What a
sad and shameful story for a German to
have to tell I Naturally the drastic system
of the military dictatorship precludes the
public expression of such feelings, but one
needs only have seen with one's own eyes
the looks so often cast by even real Turkish
cultured society at the German Feldgraiien

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 239

who often marched in close formation
through the streets of Constantinople — ^for
a time they used to sing German soldiers'
songs, until that was prohibited at the
express wish of the Turkish Government — to
realise how the land lies.

There was a marked and ill-concealed
contrast in the coldness shown to Imperial
German officers and the lavish affection
showered on the Austrians and Hungarians
who used for a time often to pass through
Constantinople on their way to the Dar-
danelles or Anatolia with their heavy
artillery. They were a great deal more
sociable than their German comrades, and
one could not fail to note the significance of
such freely voiced comments as " N'est-ce
pas. Us sont charmants les Autrichiens ? "
("The Austrians are delightful, aren't they ?")
The sight of us Germans, especially the very
considerable German garrison stationed for
a time in the Capital, awakened in the
Turks, however much they might recognise
the military necessity for our presence,
remarkable ideas about the future " German
Egyptising of Turkey," and everyone blamed

240 TWO WAR YEARS

Enver Pasha as the man responsible for
Germany's penetrating thus far.

A Turk in a high official position — ^whose
name I shall naturally not divulge — even
went so far as to say to me in an intimate
personal discussion we were having one
day between friend and friend : " We Turks
are and will always remain, in spite of the
war, pro-English and pro-French so far as
social and intellectual life is concerned ; and
it would need twenty years of hard pro-
paganda work on Germany's part, quite
different from her present methods, to
change this point of view, if it ever could be
changed." He went on to recall the time
of the pro-English era, and the enthusiastic
demonstrations that had taken place at
the Sirkedji station when the horses were
taken out of the English Ambassador's
carriage. " I was there myself," he said,
" and believe me, apart from the war, heaps
of us are at bottom still of the same mind."
And, growing heated, he added : " What is
your Embassy, tell me ? Is it really an
Embassy ? No representation, no intimate
intercourse with us, or at best only with

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 241

your political agents, no personal charm,
nothing but brusque demands and a most
humiliating economic neglect of the Turkish
population. The English and the French
and even the Russians would treat us quite
differently."

This man is no exception in his ideas.
He is a thorough Young Turk, who holds
with the "Committee" through thick and
thin and has to thank them for a very
pleasant billet, but he is, besides, a youngish
man with a modern European education.
He is thoroughly imbued, as are all of his
kind, with modern French ideas, and even
the war cannot alter that. It only needs
the final collapse of the Central Powers,
and then the break-down of the whole
political system under the direction of these
jingoistic emancipationists who think they
can get on without Europe, and the Turks
will all, every one of them, be as thoroughly
pro-English and pro-French as they ever
were and will hate Germany and every-
thing German with fanatical hatred.

Towards Hungary, their bl,ood relation,
they will probably retain some friendliness
16

242 TWO WAR YEARS

in memory of their alliance in the Great
War and the cause of Turanism ; they will
be quite indifferent to Bulgaria; they will
lose their fear of Russia and come to an
agreement with her; but after the war
there will be no bridging the gulf between
Turkey and Germany, and if Germany, on
the conclusion of peace, is allotted any part
of smaller Turkey by the rest of the European
Powers, she will have to reckon for many
a long year with the very chilly relations
that will exist between Germans and Turks.
Even those who went heart and soul into
the war as a war of defence against Turkey's
powerful northern neighbour foresee that
when peace is declared Turkey will, so far
as her enormous indebtedness to Germany
permits, rather throw herself on the mercy
of England and France and America and
beg from them the capital necessary for
reconstruction and for freeing them from
the hated German influence — ^an aversion
which is already evident in hundreds of
different ways. Even Germany is beginning
to recognise the existence of this tendency,
which, hand in hand with the jingoistic

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 243

attempt to turkify commercial life, bodes
ill for German activity in Turkey after the
war.

These are the opinions of the educated
classes. The people, however, the poor,
ignorant Turkish people, were ready long
ago to accept any solution that would
liberate them from their terrible sufferings.
The Turkish people have not the mental
calibre of our German people which will
perhaps make them fight on, just for the
sake of leaving no stone unturned, even
after it is quite evident that they are tending
towards final collapse. The stake for which
they are fighting, is not so valuable to this
agricultural people, who with an inferior
and extortionate set of rulers have never
been able really to enjoy life, as it is to the
population of a modern industrial country
like Germany, where every political gain
or loss has a direct result on their own
pockets ; defeat will certainly have much less
effect on the Oriental. One can therefore
speak with confidence of a general longing
for the end of the war at any price. The
Turks have had quite enough of suffering.

244 TWO WAR YEARS

and there are limits to what even these
wiUing and mutely resigned victims can
bear.

Nevertheless it is quite certain that the
courageous Turkish soldier, in obedience
to iron discipline and in unconditional sub-
mission to his Padishah, will continue to
defend his lost cause to the very last drop
of his blood, with an unquestioning resigna-
tion that absolutely precludes the idea of
any defection within the army. Only a
purely political military revolution, origi-
nating with the better-informed officers,
who now really no longer believe in ultimate
victory, is within the bounds of possibility.

But the most confiding endurance on
the part of the Turkish soldier, even when
the military cause has long been lost, will
not hinder this same soldier, when he is
once more back in his own home as a peasant,
from realising that European influence and
European civilisation are a very competent
protection against the miserably retrogressive
Turkish rule, and that he has drawn more
material profit from that single example
of European activity, the Baghdad Rail-

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 245

way, than from all Turkish oflacial reforms
put together, and so would willingly see
Europe exercising a powerful control in his
country. He would accept the military
collapse of his country which he had so
long and so bravely defended, and the
dramatic political changes, with a quietly
submissive " Inshallah." And although,
deprived as he is of every kind of informa-
tion and without even the beginnings of
knowledge, he perhaps still believes in
ultimate victory for the Padishah, he will
probably heave a sigh of relief when the
unexpected collapse comes, and he will
not take long to understand what it means
for him : freedom and happiness and an
undreamt-of material well-being under
strong European influence.

The late successor to the throne. Prince
Yussuf Izzedin Effendi, was the highest of
those in high authority who openly repre-
sented the pessimistic anti-war tendency.
It was for this that he was murdered or
perhaps made to commit suicide by Enver
Pasha. The whole truth about this tragic
occurrence can only be sifted to the bottom

246 TWO WAR YEARS

when the dictators of the "Committee" are
no longer in their place and light finally
breaks on Turkey. Whether it was murder
or suicide, the death of the successor to the
throne is one of the most dramatic scandals
of Turkish history, and Enver Pasha has
his blood, as well as the blood of so many
others, on his head. As far as is possible
during the war, Europe has already collected
all the information available on the subject.
I myself was in Constantinople when the
tragic occurrence took place, and I can
speak so far from personal experience.

In connection with this sensational event,
the world has already heard how Yussuf
Izzedin was kept for years under the despotic
Abdul-Hamid shut off from the world as a
semi-prisoner in his beautiful Kondk of
Sindjirlikuyu, just outside the gates of Con-
stantinople, where he became a sufferer
from acute neurasthenia. In recent years,
however, his health had improved and, ,
although latently hostile to the men of
the "Committee" and their politics, he had
come more into the foreground, especially
after the recapture of Adrianople, which

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 247

he visited with full pomp and ceremony
as Crown Prince of the Turkish Empire.
While the Gallipoli campaign was going on,
he even made a journey to the Front to
greet his soldiers. Early one morning he
was found lying dead in a pool of his own
blood with a severed artery. He had re-
ceived his death wound in exactly the same
place and exactly the same way as his
father, Sultan Abdul-Aziz, who fell a victim
to Abdul-Hamid's hatred. The political
significance of Yussuf Izzedin's death is
perfectly clear. What we want to do now
is to demonstrate Enver Pasha's moral
culpability in the matter and to show how
he was more or less directly the murderer
of this quiet, cultured, highly respected, and
thoroughly patriotic man, who was some
day to ascend the throne of Turkey.

So much at least seems to be clear, that
Prince Izzedin, who was naturally interested
in retaining his accession to the throne
undisturbed and who in spite of his neuras-
thenia was man enough to stand up for his
own rights, foresaw ruin for his kingdom
by Turkey's entry into the war on the side

248 TWO WAR YEARS

of Germany. He was more far-seeing than
the careless adventurers and narrow-minded
fanatics of the "Committee" and recognised
that the letting-go of the treasured Pan-
Islamic traditions of old Sultan Hamid was
a grave mistake which would lead to the
alienation of the Arabs, and which endangered
both the Ottoman Caliphate and Ottoman
rule in the southern parts of the Empire.
He could not console himself for the evacua-
tion of the territory round Adrianople, right
up to the gates of the sacred city, which
meant much to him as the symbol of national
enlightenment. He had a real personal
dislike for upstarts of the stamp of Enver
and Talaat. Apart from these differences
of opinion and personal sympathies and
antipathies, deep-rooted though these un-
doubtedly were, Yussuf Izzedin was and
always would have been a thorough " Os-
manli " with fiery nationalistic feelings, who
wished for nothing but the good of his
Empire and his country. And yet he was
got rid of.

It would be difficult for the present
Turkish Government to prove that the

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 249

successor to the throne, apart from his
feeling of sorrow that his country had been
drawn into the war, apart from his readi-
ness to conclude an honourable separate
peace at the first possible moment, did
anything which might have caused them
trouble. The officials of the Turkish Govern-
ment had themselves made repeated efforts
through their Swiss Ambassadors to find
out how the land lay, and whether they
could conclude a separate peace ; so they
had no grounds at all for reproaching
Prince Yussuf Izzedin, who, as a leader of
this movement, naturally let no opportunity
of this kind slide. In any case he was far
too clever not to know that any attempt
in this direction behind the backs of the
present Government would have no chance
of success so long as Turkey was held under
the iron fist of Germany.

Perhaps the "Committee" had something
to fear for the future, when the time came
for the reverses now regarded as inevitable.
Yussuf would then make use of his powerful
influence in many circles — notably among
the discontented retired military men — to de-

250 TWO WAR YEARS

mand redress from the " Committee." Enver,
true to his unscrupulous character, quite
hardened to the sight of Turkish blood,
and determined to stick to his post at all
costs — for it was not only lucrative, but
flattering to his vanity — was not the man
to stick at trifles with a poor neurasthenic,
who under the present military dictatorship
was absolutely at his mercy. He therefore
decided on cold-blooded murder.

The Prince, well aware of the danger that
threatened him, tried at the last moment
to leave the country and flee to safety.
He had even taken his ticket, and intended
to start by the midday Balkan train next
day to travel to Switzerland via Germany.
He was forbidden to travel. Whether, feel-
ing himself thus driven into a comer and
nothing but death at the hand of Enver's
creatures staring him in the face, he killed
himself in desperation, or whether, as thou-
sands of people in Constantinople firmly
believe, and as would seem to be corro-
borated by the generally accepted, although
of course not actually verified, tale of a
bloody encounter between the murderers

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 251

and the Prince's bodyguard, with victims
on both sides, he was actually assassinated,
is not yet settled, and it is really not a
matter of vast importance.

One thing is clear, and that is that Izzedin
Effendi did not pay with his life for any
disloyal act, but merely for his personal and
political opposition to Enver. He is but
one on this murderer's long list of victims.
The numerous doctors, all well - known
creatures of the "Committee" or easily won
over by intimidation, who set their names
as witnesses to this " suicide as a result of
severe neurasthenia " — a most striking and
suspicious similarity to the case of Abdul-
Aziz — have not prevented one single think-
ing man in Constantinople from forming a
correct opinion on the matter. The wily
Turkish Government evidently chose this
kind of death, just like his father's, so
that they could diagnose the symptoms as
those of incurable neurasthenia. History
has already formed its own opinion as to
how much freewill there was in Abdul-
Aziz' death ! The opinions of different
people about Prince Yussuf's death only

252 TWO WAR YEARS

differ as to whether he was murdered or
compelled to commit suicide. " 0»i Va
suicide," was the ironical and frank com-
ment of one clever Old Turk. We will leave
it at that.

The funeral of the successor to the throne
was a most interesting sight. I sent an
article on it to my paper at the time, which
of course had only very, very slight allusions
to anything of a sinister character; but it
did not find favour with the censor at the
Berlin Foreign Office. The editorial staff
of the paper evidently saw what I was
driving at, and wrote to me : " We have
revised and touched up your report so as
at least to save the most essential part
of it " ; but even the altered version did
not pass the censor's blue pencil. But I
had at any rate the moral satisfaction of
knowing that of all the papers with corres-
pondents in the Turkish capital, mine, the
Kolnische Zeitung, was the only one that
could publish nothing, not a single line,
about this important and highly sensational
occurrence, for I simply wrote nothing more.
That was surely clear enough !

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 253

When in 1913, after the unsuccessful
counter-revolution, Mahmud Shevket Pasha
was assassinated and was going to be buried
in Constantinople, the "Committee" issued
invitations days beforehand to all foreign
personages. This time nothing of the sort
happened ; and even the Press representatives
were not invited to be present. On the
former occasion everything possible was
done, by putting off the interment as long
as possible and repeatedly publishing the
date, by lengthening the route of the funeral
procession, to give several thousands of
people an opportunity of taking part in the
ceremony.

This time, however, the authorities ar-
ranged the burial with all speed, and the
very next day after the sensational occur-
rence the body was hurried by the shortest
way, through the Giilhane Park, to the
Mausoleum of Sultan Mahmud-Moshee. The
coffin had been quietly brought in the
twilight the evening before from the Kiosk
of Sindjirlikuyu on the other side of Pera
on the Maslak Hill, to the top of the Serail.
Along the whole route, however, wherever

254 TWO WAR YEARS

the public had access, there were lines
of police and soldiers ; and the bright uniforms
of the police who were inserted in groups of
twenty between every single row of the pro-
cession of Ministers, members of the "Com-
mittee" and delegates who walked behind
the coffin, were really the most conspicuous
thing in the whole ceremony. Enver Pasha
passed quite close to me, and; neither I,
nor my companions, could fail to note the
ill-concealed expression of satisfaction on
his face.

The most remarkable thing about this
whole funeral, however, was the visit paid me
by the Secretary-General of the Senate, the
minute after I had reached home (and I
had driven by the shortest way). With a
zeal that might have surprised even the
simplest minded of men, he offered to tell
me about the Prince's life, lingering long
and going into exhaustive detail over the
well-known facts of his nervous ailment.
Then, blushing at his own awkwardness
and importunity, he begged me most
earnestly to publish his version of all the
details and circumstances of this tragic

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 255

occurrence, " which no other paper will be
in a position to publish." Naturally it
was never written.

So, once more, in the late summer of 1916,
Enver Pasha, who was so fond of discovering
conspiracies and political movements in
order to get rid of his enemies, and go
scot free himself, had a fresh opportunity
of reflecting, with even more foundation
than usual, on the firmness of his position
and the security of his own life.

It is perhaps time now to give a more
comprehensive description of this man.
We have already mentioned in connection
with the failure of his Caucasus offensive
that Enver has been extraordinarily over-
estimated in Europe. The famous Enver
is neither a prominent intellectual leader
nor a good organiser — ^in this direction he
is far surpassed by Djemal Pasha — ^nor a
successful strategist. In military matters
his positive qualities are personal courage,
optimism, and, consequently, initiative which
is never daunted by fear of consequences,
also cold-bloodedness and determination;
but he is entirely lacking in judgment.

256 TWO WAR YEARS

power of discrimination, and largeness of
conception. From the German point of view
he is particularly valuable for his unques-
tioning and unconditional association with
the Central Powers, his readiness to do
anything that will further their cause, his
pliability and his zeal in accommodating
himself even to the most trenchant reforms.
But it is just these qualities that make
enemies for him among retired military men
and among the people.

Regarded from a purely personal point
of view, Enver Pasha is, in spite of the
fulsome praise showered on him by Germans
inspired by that most pliant implement,
German militarism, one of the most
repugnant subjects ever produced by Turkey.
Even from a purely external point of view
his appearance does not at all correspond
with the picture of him generally accepted in
Germany from flattering reports and falsified
photographs. Small of stature, with quite
an ordinary face, he looks rather, as one
of my journalistic colleagues said, like a
" gardener's boy " than a Vice-General
and War Minister, and anyone who ever

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 257

has the opportunity I have so often had,
of looking really closely at him, will cer-
tainly be repelled by his look of vanity and
cunning. It was really most painful to
have to listen to him (he has always been
a bad and monotonous speaker) in the
Senate and the Lower House at the conclusion
of the Dardanelles campaign reading his
report in a weak, halting voice, but with the
disdainful tone of a dictator. Every third
word was an " I." Even the Turkish Press
accorded this parliamentary speech a fairly
frosty reception.

Besides this, Enver is one of the most
cold-blooded liars imaginable. Time and
again there has been no necessity for him
to say certain things in Parliament, or to
make certain promises, but apparently he
found cynical enjoyment in making the
people and Parliament feel their whole in-
feriority in his eyes. What can one think,
for example, of such performances as this ?
At the end of 1916 when the discussion
about military service for those who had
paid the exemption tax (bedel) was going
on, he gave an unsolicited and solemn
17

258 TWO WAR YEARS

assurance before the whole House that he
had no intention whatever of caUing up
certain classes until the Bill had been finally
passed and that it would show that he
was really desirous of sparing commercial
life as far as possible in the calling up of
men. Exactly two hours after this speech
the drum resounded through all the streets
of Stamboul and Pera, calling up all those
classes over which Enver had as yet no
power of jurisdiction, and which he said
he wanted to keep back because to tear
them away from their employment would
mean the complete disorganisation of the
already sadly disordered commercial life of
the country.

This was Talaat's opinion too, and he
offered a firm resistance to Enver's plan,
which it appears had been introduced by com-
mand of the German Government. In this
case, however, resistance was useless, and had
to give way to military necessity. If Enver
said something in Parliament — ^this at any
rate was the general conclusion — one might
be quite certain that exactly the opposite
would take place. He has now gained

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 259

for himself the reputation of being a liar
and a murderer among all those who are
not followers of the "Committee."

In contrast to Talaat, who is at least
intelligent enough to keep up appearances
and cunning enough to hold himself well in
the background, Enver's personal lack of
integrity in money matters is a subject of
most shameful knowledge in Constantinople.
It is pretty well generally known how he
has made use of his position as Military
Dictator to gain possession for himself of
property worth thousands of pounds, and
how in his financial dealings with Germany
hundreds have found their way into his
own pocket — ^up till the winter of 1915-
1916, according to an estimate from con-
fidential Turkish circles and from German
sources I will not name, he had already
managed to collect something like two million
pounds, reckoned in English money. This
son of a former lowly conducteur in the
service of the Roads and Bridges Board
whose mother, as I have been assured by
Turks is the case, plied in Stamboul a
much-despised and lowly trade, now lives

260 TWO WAR YEARS

in his Konak in more than princely luxury,
with flowers and silver and gold on his
table, having married, out of pure ambition,
a very plain-looking princess. That is
the true portrait of this much-coddled
darling of the Young Turks, and latterly
of the German people as weU. This is the
idol of so many admiring German women,
who are bewitched by his more than adven-
turous career and the halo surrounding him
which he has enhanced by every known
and unknown means of self-advertisement.

Enver's character won for him in "Com-
mittee" circles personal dislike and bitter,
though veiled, enmity even from his
colleagues who were of exactly the same
political persuasion as himself. Of his re-
lations towards the infinitely more import-
ant Djemal Pasha we have already spoken ;
we shall speak in a moment of his relations
to Talaat. In the world of the retired
military men, however, who had been
badgered about by Enver, neglected and
simply forcibly pensioned off by hundreds
before the war because of their divergent
political opinions, and even thrown into

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 261

the street, the War Minister was heartily
hated. A very large part of them were
of the same political views as the murdered
successor to the throne, and their opinion
of the Great War was as we have already
indicated. They pointed bitterly to Enver
as the all-too-pliable servant of Germany,
who was only too ready to sacrifice the
flower of Ottoman youth on those far
battlefields of Galicia at a sign from the
German Staff, and open door after door to
German influence in the Interior without
even attempting to protect the land of
his fathers from invasion and decay.

As we have said, political revolutions in
Turkey usually start in military circles,
not among the people, and there was an
actual attempt in this direction in the
autumn of 1916. Either by chance or by
someone's betraying the plot, it was dis-
covered by Enver in time, and the number
of military men and Old Turkish personages
associated with them, imprisoned in Con-
stantinople alone, reached six hundred.
At the head of the movement stood Major
Yakub Djemil Bey.

262 TWO WAR YEARS

During the whole of the summer of 1916
Enver's position had been looked upon as
quite insecure. The knowledge of his greed
in money matters, his tactless pushing, and
his ruthless brutality had totally alienated
a wide circle of people, and many believed
that he would soon have to resign.

In addition to this, a deep inward anta-
gonism reigned between him and Talaat,
the real leader and by far the most important
statesman of Turkey, which was far more
than a cleverly veiled personal dislike.
There was a constant struggle for power
going on between the two men. By the
end of May the crisis had become pretty
acute, although outward appearances were
still preserved and only well-informed circles
knew anything at all about the matter.
Enver had at that time to hurry back
from the Irak, where he was on a visit
of inspection with the German Chief of
Staff and the Military Attach^, in order to
safeguard his post. In confidential circles,
the outbreak of open enmity between the
two was fully expected; but this time
again Talaat was the cleverer. He felt

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 263

that, in spite of his own greater influence
and following, in spite of his real superiority
to Enver, he might perhaps, if he tried
conclusions with him while he was still in
command of the army, find himself the loser
and, in view of Enver's murderous habits,
pay for his rashness with his life. So he
decided not to risk a decisive battle just
yet. He was too patriotic, also, to let
things come to an open break during the
difficult time of war. Talaat disappeared
for a short time on a visit of inspection to
Angora, and things settled down to their
old way again.

There is still internal conflict going on.
But Enver, with boundless ambition and
no fine feelings of honour, clings to his
post, and has shown by the way he dealt with
the instigators of the conspiracy mentioned
above that nothing but force wiU move him
from his post, and that he will never yield
to public opinion or the criticism of his col-
leagues. He was troubled by no qualms, in
spite of the widely circulated opinion that he
would certainly jeopardise his life if he went on
in the same ruthless way towards the retired

264 TWO WAR YEARS

military men. He simply had the leader,
Yakub Djemil Bey, hanged like a common
criminal, and the whole of his followers, for
the most part superior officers and highly
respected persons, turned into soldiers of
the second class, and put in the front-line
trenches.

Enver's removal would not alter the
whole Young Turkish regime much, but
it would take from it much of its ruthless
barbarity, and its most repugnant represen-
tative would vanish from the picture. It
would also be a severe blow for Germany
and her militaristic policy of driving Turkey
mercilessly to suicide. It would be a god-
send to the anti-German Djemal Pasha.
From a political point of view it would
mean, far more than Talaat's appointment
as Grand Vizier, the absolute supremacy
of that statesman.

At bottom probably less ruthless than
Enver and certainly cleverer, there is no
doubt but that Talaat would pursue his
jingoistic ideas in the realm of race-politics,
but at any rate he would not want any
military system of f rightfulness. Enver's

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 265

removal from office will come within the
range of near possibility as soon as the
new British operations against Southern
Palestine and Mesopotamia have produced
a real victory. Turkey is not in a good
enough military position to prevent this,
and the whole world will soon recognise
that it is this servant of Germany, this care-
less optimist and very mediocre strategist
who is to blame for the inexorable breaking-
up of the Ottoman Empire.

The contrast I have noted between Enver
and Talaat provides the opportunity for
saying a few words about Talaat, now
Pasha and Grand Vizier, and by far the
most important man of New Turkey. As
Minister of the Interior, he has guided the
whole fate of his country, except in purely
military matters, as uncrowned king. It
is he more than anyone else who is the
originator of the whole system of home
politics. Solidity of character, earnestness,
freedom from careless optimism, and con-
spicuous power of judgment distinguish
him most favourably from Enver, who
possesses the opposite of all these qualities.

266 TWO WAR YEARS

A high degree of intelligence, an enormous
knowledge of men, an exceptional gift of
organisation and tireless energy combined
with great personal authority, prudence
and reserve, calm weighing of the actual
possibilities — in a word, all the qualities of
the real statesman — raise him head and
shoulders above the whole of his colleagues
and co-workers. It would be unjust to
doubt his ardent patriotism or the honesty
of his ideas and intentions. Talaat's char-
acter is so impressive that one often hears
even Armenians, the victims of his own
original policy of persecution, speak of
him with respect, and I have even heard
the opinion expressed that had it not been
for Talaat's cleverness, the Committee would
have gone much further with their mis-
chievous policy.

But his high intellectual abilities do not
prevent him from suffering from that same
plague of narrow-minded, jingoistic illusion
peculiar to the Pan-Turks. He is as if
intoxicated with a race-fanaticism that stifles
all nobler emotions. Talaat is too metho-
dical and clever not to avoid all intentional

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 267

ruthlessness, but in practice his system,
which he follows out with inflexible logic
to the bitter end, turns out to be just as
brutal as Enver's intrinsically more barbar-
ous policy. And although he accommodates
himself outwardly to modern European
methods and knows how to utilise them,
the ethics of his system are out-and-out
Asiatic. When Talaat speaks in the "Com-
mittee," there is very rarely the slightest
opposition. He has usually prepared and
coached the " Committee " so well beforehand
that he can to all appearance keep in the back-
ground and only follow the majority. With
the exception of a few military affairs, every-
thing has always become an accomplished
fact that he has ever proposed in Parliament.
Beside this man, whose sparkling eyes,
massive shoulders, broad chest, clean-cut
profile and exuberant health denote the
whole unbounded energy of the dictator,
the good-natured, degenerate, and epileptic-
ally inclined Sultan, Mehmed V, "El
Ghazi " (" the hero "), is but a weak shadow.
But if we fully recognise Talaat's high
intellectual qualities, we should like all

268 TWO WAR YEARS

the more to emphasise that he must be
held personally responsible more than all
the others for everything that is now hap-
pening in Turkey, so far as it is not of a
military character. The spirit reigning in
Turkey to-day, the spirit of Pan-Turkish
jingoism, is Talaat's spirit. The Armenian
persecutions are his very own work. And
when the day of reckoning comes for the
Turkey of the " Committee of Union and
Progress," it is to be hoped that Europe
as judge and chastiser and avenger of an
outraged civilisation will lay the chief blame
on Talaat Pasha rather than on his far
weaker colleague Enver.

All his eminent qualities, however, do
not prevent this intellectual leader of Turkey,
the most important man, beside the Sultan,
in the land, from showing signs of something
that is typical of the whole "Committee"
clique with their dictatorial power, and
which we may perhaps be allowed to call
parvenuishness. At all points we see the
characteristics of the parvenu in this states-
man and one-time adventurer and in these
creatures of the "Committee" who have re-

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 269

cently become wealthy by certain abuses — I
would remind you only of the Requisitions —
and by a lucrative adherence to the ruling
clique. There are of course individual cases
of distinguished men of good birth throwing
in their lot with the "Committee," but they
are extremely rare, and they only help to
give an even worse impression of the average
Young Turk belonging to the Government.
Their past is usually extremely doubtful,
and their careers have been somewhat varied.
No one of course would ever think of
setting it down as a black mark against
Talaat, for example, that he had to work
his way up to his present supreme position
from the very modest occupation of post-
man and postal coach conductor on the
Adrianople road, via telegraph assistant
and other branches of the Post Office ; on
the contrary, such intelligence and energy
are worthy of the highest praise. But
Talaat's case is a comparatively good one,
and it is not so much their low social origin
that is a drawback to these political leaders
of Turkey, as their complete lack of educa-
tion in statesmanship and history, which

270 TWO WAR YEARS

unfits them for the high r61e they are called
upon to fill. Naturally it is not exactly
pleasant when a man like Herr Paul Weitz,
the correspondent of the Frankfurter Zeitmig,
and a political agent, can boast with a
certain amount of justification that he has
given tips of money to many of the present
members of the "Committee" — ^in the real
sense of the word, not in the political mean-
ing of backshish \ It is no wonder, then,
that German influence won its way through
so easily !

Even yet Talaat's lowly origin is a draw-
back to him socially, and, in spite of his
jovial manner and his complete confidence
in his own powers, he sometimes feels him-
self so unsure that he rather avoids social
duties. Probably one of the reasons of his
long delay in accepting the post of Grand
Vizier — ^he was already definitely marked
out for it in the summer of 1915 — ^was his
own inner consciousness that his whole
past life unfitted him socially for the duties
of such an office. That he has now decided
to accept it, is only the logical sequence
of the system of absolute Turkification,

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 271

which, with its plan of muzzling and sup-
planting all non-Turkish elements, had of
course to get rid of the Egyptian element
in the Government, represented by Prince
Halim Said, the late Grand Vizier, and his
brother, the late Minister of Public Works.
There are far more outstanding cases
of incompatibility between social upbringing
and present occupation among the "Com-
mittee." I will simply take the single
example of the Director General of the
Press, Hikmet Bey. Mischievous Pera still
gives him the nickname of " siitdji " (" milk-
man "), because — although it is no reproach
to him any more than in Talaat's case —
he still kept his father's milk shop in the
Rue Tep6 Bashi in Pera before he managed
to get himself launched on a political career
by close adherence to the Committee. Some-
times, of course, one inherits from a low
social origin far worse things than social
inferiority. Perhaps Djemal Pasha's

murderous instincts are to be traced to
the fact that his grandfather was the official
hangman in the service of Sultan Mahmud,
and that his father still retained the

272 TWO WAR YEARS

nick-name of " hangman " among the
people.

One only needs to cast a glance at the
Young Turks who are the leaders of fashion
in the " Club de Constantinople " — ^after
the English and French members are absent
— ^with German ojBficers who have been
admitted as temporary members at a reduced
subscription, and one will find there, as
in the more exclusive " Cercle d'Orient,"
and in the " Yachting Club " in Prinkipo
in the summer-time, individuals belonging
to the " Committee " whose lowly origin and
bad manners are evident at the first glance.
Talaat, who is himself President of the
Club, knows exactly how to get his adherents
elected as members without one of them
being blackballed. People who used not
to know what an International Club was,
or who perhaps, in accordance with their
former social status, got as far as the
vestibule to speak to the concierge, are
now great " club men " and can afford, with
the money they have amassed in " clique "
trade and by the famous system of Requisi-
tions, to play poker every evening for stakes

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 273

of hundreds of Turkish pounds. One single
kaleidoscopic glance into the perpetual whirl
of any one of these clubs, which used to be
places of friendly social intercourse for the
best European circles, is quite sufficient
to see the class of degenerate, greedy par-
venus that rule poor, bleeding, helpless,
exhausted Turkey. One cannot but be filled
with a deep sympathy for this unfortunate
land.

The Turks of decent birth are disgusted
at these parvenus. I have had conversa-
tions with many an old Pasha and Senator,
true representatives of the refined and kindly
Old Turkish aristocracy, and heard many a
word of stern disapproval of the "Committee"
quite apart from their divergent political
opinions. There is a whole distinguished
Turkish world in Constantinople who com-
pletely boycott Enver and his consorts
socially, although they have to put up with
their caprices politically. " I don't know
Enver at all," or " Je ne connais pas ces
gens-la " (" I don't know these people "),
are phrases that one very often hears repeated
with infinite disdain. In all these cases
18

274 TWO WAR YEARS

it is the purely personal side — ^blrth and
manners — ^that repels them.

Socially the cleft between the two camps is
far deeper than it is politically, for many
of these same people accommodate them-
selves, though with reluctance in their heart,
to sharing at least formally as Senators in
the responsibility for the present Young
Turkish policy. They have to do so, for
otherwise they would simply be flung merci-
lessly by Enver's Clique on to the streets
to beg for bread. This is how it comes
about to-day that, with very few exceptions,
the Senators, who, to tell the truth, have
as little practical say as the members of
the Lower House, are all outwardly complai-
sant followers of the "Committee." The more
doctrinal, but at any rate courageous and
honourable opposition of Ahmed Riza is
likewise of very little significance. Once,
about the middle of December, 1916, Enver
even went so far as to hurl the epithet
" shameless dog " at Ahmed Riza in the
Senate without being called to order by the
President.

The Deputies are also, with even fewer

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 275

exceptions than the Senators — only one or
two are reasonable men — all slaves pure and
simple of Enver and Talr^t. The Lower
House is nothing but a set of employees
paid by the Clique. In other countries
now at war the Lower House may have
sunk to the level of a laughing-stock ; in
Turkey it has become the instrument of
crime. And it is these same toadies and
parasites, who daily carry out Enver's wiU
in Parliament, that he daily treats with
scarcely veiled irony and open and complete
disdain. These are the " representatives
of the people " in Turkey in war-time !

CHAPTER X

The outlook for the future — The consequences of trusting
Germany — The Entente's death sentence on Turkey
— The social necessity for this deliverance — Anatolia,
the new Turkey after the war — ^Forecasts about the
Turkish race — The Turkish element in the lost terri-
tory — Russia and Constantinople ; international
guarantees — Germany, at peace, benefits too — Fare-
well to the German " World -politicians " — German
interests in a victorious and in an amputated Turkey
— The German-Turkish treaty — A paradise on earth —
The Russian commercial impetus — The new Armenia —
Western Anatolia, the old Greek centre of civilisation
— Great Arabia and Syria — The reconciliation of
Germany.

We have come to the end of our sketches.
The question before us now is : What
will become of Turkey ? The Entente has
pronounced formal sentence of death on
the Empire of the Sultan, and neither the
slowly fading military power of Turkey,
nor the help of Germany, who is herself
already virtually conquered, will be able
to arrest her fate.

276

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 277

On the high frost-bound uplands of
Armenia the Russians hold a strategic
position from which it is impossible to
dislodge them, and which will probably
very soon extend to the Gulf of Alexan-
dretta. In Mesopotamia, after that enor-
mously important political event, the Fall
of Baghdad, the union was effected be-
tween the British troops and the Russians,
advancing steadily from Persia. The Suez
Canal is now no longer threatened, and the
British troops have been removed from
there for a counter-offensive in Southern
Palestine, and probably, when the psycho-
logical moment arrives, an offensive against
Syria, now so sadly shattered politically.
It is quite within the bounds of possi-
bility, too, that during this war a big new
Front may be formed in Western Anatolia,
already completely broken up by the Pan-
Hellenic Irredenta, and the Turks will be
hard put to it to find troops to meet the
new offensive. Arabia is finally and abso-
lutely lost, and England, by establishing an
Arabian Caliphate, has already won the war
against Turkey. Meantime, on the far battle-

278 TWO WAR YEARS

fields of Galicia and the Balkans, whole
Ottoman divisions are pouring out their
life-blood, fighting for that elusive German
victory that never comes any nearer, while
in every nook and corner of their own land
there is a terrible lack of troops. Enver
Pasha, at length grown anxious, has attemp-
ted to recall them, but in vain.

That is a short r6sum6 of the military
situation. This is how the Turkey of Enver
and Talaat is atoning for the trust she has
placed in Germany.

To a German journalist who went out
two years ago to a great Turkey, striving
for a " Greater Turkey," it does indeed
seem a bitter irony of fate to see his sphere
of labour thus reduced to nothingness. The
fall of Turkey is the greatest blow that
coidd have been dealt to German " world-
politics " ; it is a disappointment that will
have the gravest consequences. But from
the standpoint of culture, human civilisation,
ethics, the liberty of the peoples and justice,
historical progress, the economic develop-
ment of wide tracts of land of the greatest
importance from their geographical position.

IN CONSTANT INDPXE 279

it is one of the most brilliant results of the
war, and one to be hailed with unmixed joy.
When I look back on how wonderfully things
have shaped in the last two and a half years
I am bound to admit that I am happy
things have turned out as they have. If
perchance any Turk who knows me happens
to read these lines, I beg him not to think
that my ideas are saturated with hatred
of Turkey. On the contrary, I love the
country and the Turkish race with those
many attractive qualities that rightly ap-
pealed to a poet like Loti.

I have asked myself thousands of times
what would be the best political solution of
the problem, how to help this people — and
the other races inhabiting their country — ^to
true and lasting happiness. From my many
journeys in tropical lands, I have grown
accustomed to the sight of autochthonous
civilisations and semi - civilised peoples,
and am as interested in them as in the
most perfectly civilised nations of Europe.
I have therefore, I think, been able to set
aside entirely in my own mind the territorial
interests of the West in the development of

280 TWO WAR YEARS

the Near East, and give my whole attention
to Turkey's own good and Turkey's own
needs. But even then I have been obliged
to subscribe to the sentence of death passed
on the Turkey of the Young Turks and the
sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire. It is
with the fullest consciousness of what I am
doing that I agree to the seemingly cruel
amputation of this State. It is merely
the outer shell covering a number of peoples
who suffer cruelly under an unjust system,
chief among them the brave Turkish people
who have been led by a criminal Government
to take the last step on the road to ruin.
The point of view I have adopted does
not in any way detract from my personal
sympathies, and I still have hopes that the
many personal friendships I made in Con-
stantinople will not be broken by the hard
words I have been obliged to utter in the
cause of truth, in the interests of outraged
civilisation, and in the interests of a happier
future for the Ottoman people themselves.
The amputation of Turkey is a stern
social necessity. Someone has said : " The
greatest enemy of Turkey is the Turk." I

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 281

have too much love for the Turkish people,
too much sympathy for them, to adopt this
pessimistic attitude without great inward
opposition; but unfortunately it is only
too true. We have seen how the Turkey
of Enver and Talaat has reacted sharply
against the Western-minded, liberal era of
the 1876 and 1908 constitutions, and has
turned again to Asia and her newly dis-
covered ideal, Turanism. To the Turks of
to-day, European culture and civilisation are
at best but a technical means ; they are no
longer an end in themselves. Their dream is
no longer Western Europe, but a nationally
awakened and strengthened Asiaticism.

In face of this intellectual development,
how can we hope that in the new Turkey
there wUl be a radical alteration of what,
in the whole course of Ottoman history,
has always been the one characteristic,
unchangeable, momentous fact, of what
has always shattered the most honest efforts
at reform, and always will shatter every
attempt at improvement within a sovereign
Turkey — I refer to the relationship of the
Turk to the ''Rajah" (the "herd"), the

282 TWO WAR YEARS

Christian subjects of the Padishah. The
Ottoman, the Mohammedan conqueror, lives
by the " herd " he has found in the land
he has conquered ; the " herd " are the
" unbelievers," and rooted deep in the mind
of this sovereign people, who have never
quite lost their nomadic instincts, is the
conviction that they have the right to live
by the sweat of the brow of their Christian
subjects and on the fruits of their labour.
That we Europeans think this unjust the
Turk will never be able to grasp.

A Wali of Erzerum once said : " The
Turkish Government and the Armenian
people stand in the relationship of man
and wife, and any third persons who feel
sympathy for the wife and anger at the
wife-beating husband will do better not
to meddle in this domestic strife." This
quotation has become famous, for it exactly
characterises the relationship of the Turk
to the " Rajah," not to the Armenians.
In this phrase alone there lies, quite apart
from all the crimes committed by the present
Turkish Government, a sufficient moral and
political foundation for the sentence of

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 283

death passed on the sovereignty of the
present Turkish State. For so long as the
Turks cling to Islam, from which springs
that opposition between Moslem rulers and
" Giaur " subjects so detrimental to all
social progress, it is Europe's sacred duty
not to give Turkey sovereignty over any
territory with a strong Christian element.
That is why Turkey must at all costs be
confined to Inner Anatolia; that is why
complete amputation is necessary ; and why
the outlying districts of Turkey, the Straits,
the Anatolian coast, the whole of Armenia
must be rescued and, part of it at any
rate, placed under formal European protec-
tion.

Even in Inner Anatolia, which will prob-
ably still be left to the Ottomans after the
war, the strongest European influence must
be brought to bear — ^which will probably
not be difficult in view of Turkey's financial
bankruptcy ; European customs and civilisa-
tion must be introduced ; in a word, Europe
must exercise sufficient control to be in
a position to prevent the numerous non-
Turks resident even in Anatolia from being

284 TWO WAR YEARS

exposed to the old system of exploiting the
"Rajah." Discerning Turks themselves
have admitted that it would be best for
Europe to put the whole of Turkey for a
generation under curatorship and general
European supervision.

I, personally, should not be satisfied with
this system for the districts occupied more
by non-Turks than by Turks ; but, on the
other hand, I should not go so far in the
case of Inner Anatolia. I trust that strong
European influence will make it possible to
make Inner Anatolia a sovereign territory.
I have pinned my faith on the Ottoman race
being given another and final opportunity
on her own ground of showing how she will
develop now after the wonderful intellectual
improvement that has taken place during
the war. I hope at the same time that
even in a sovereign Turkish Inner Anatolia
Europe will have enough say to prevent any
out-growths of the " Rajah principle."

The Turks must not be deprived of the
opportunity to bring their new-found abili-
ties, which even we must praise, to bear
on the production of a new, modern, but

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 285

thoroughly Turkish civilisation of their own
on their own ground. Anatolia, beautiful
and capable of development, is, even if we
confine it to those interior parts chiefly
inhabited by Ottomans, still quite a big
enough field for the production of such a
civilisation ; it is quite big enough too for
the terribly reduced numbers now belonging
to the Ottoman race.

The amputation and limitation of Turkey,
even if they do not succeed in altering the
real Turkish point of view — and this, so far
as the relationship to the Christians is con-
cerned, is the same, from the Pasha down
to the poorest Anatolian peasant — ^will at
least have a tremendously beneficial effect.
The possibilities in the Turkish race will
come to flower. " The worst patriots," I
once dared to say in one of my articles in
spite of the censorship, " are not those who
look for the future of the nation in concen-
trated cultural work in the Turkish nucleus-
land of Anatolia, instead of gaping over the
Caucasus and down into the sands of the
African desert in their search for a ' Greater
Turkey.' " And in connection with the

286 TWO WAR YEARS

series of lectures I have already mentioned
about Anatolian hygiene and social politics,
I said, with quite unmistakable meaning:
" Turkey will have a wonderful opportunity
on her own original ground, in the nucleus-
land of the Ottomans, of proving her
capability and showing that she has become
a really modern, civilised State."

My earnest wish is that all the Turks'
high intellectual abilities, brought to the
front by this v/ar, may be concentrated
on this beautiful and repaying task. In-
tensive labour and the concentration of all
forces on positive work in the direction of
civilisation will have to take the place of
corrupt rule, boundless neglect, waste, the
strangulation of all progressive movements,
political illusions, the unquenchable desire
for conquest and oppression. This is what
we pray for for Anatolia, the real New
Turkey after the war. In other districts
also, now fully under European control, the
pure Turkish element will flourish much
more exceedingly than ever before under
the beneficent protection of modern, civilised
Governments. Frankly, the dream of Turk-

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 287

ish Power has vanished. But new life
springs out of ruin and decay; the history
of mankind is a continual change.

Russia, too, after the war, will no longer
be what she seemed to terrified Turkish
eyes and jealous German eyes dazzled
by " world-politics " : a colossal creature,
stretching forth enormous suckers to swallow
up her smaller neighbours ; a country ruled
by a dull, unthinking despotism.

From the standpoint of universal civilisa-
tion it is to be hoped that the solution of
the problem of the Near East will be to
transform the Straits between the Black Sea
and Mgea, together with the city of Con-
stantinople, uniquely situated as it is, into
a completely international stretch with open
harbours. Then we need no longer oppose
Russian aspirations. If England, the strong-
hold of Free Trade and of all principles of
freedom of intercourse, and France, the land
of culture, interested in Turkey to the
extent of millions, were content to leave
Russia a free hand in the Straits ; if Ru-
mania, shut in in the Black Sea, did not
fear for her trade, but was willing to

288 TWO WAR YEARS

become an ally of Russia in full know-
ledge of the Entente agreement about the
Straits, it is of course sufficiently evident
what guarantee with regard to international
freedom modern Russia will have to give
after the war, and even the Germans have
nothing to fear. Of course the German
anti-European " Antwerp-Baghdad " dream
will be shattered. But once Germany is at
peace, she will probably find that even the
Russian solution of the Straits question
benefits her not a little. The final realisa-
tion of Russia's efforts, justifiable both
historically and geographically, to reach the
Mediterranean at this one eminently suitable
spot, will certainly contribute in an extra-
ordinary degree to remove the unbearable
political pressure from Europe and ensure
peace for the world.

Just a few parting words to the German
" World-politicians." Very often, as I have
said, I heard during my stay in Constan-
tinople expressions of anxiety on the part
pf Germans that all German interests, even
purely commercial ones, would be gravely
endangered in the victorious New Turkey,

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 289

which would spring to life again with
renewed jingoistic passions and renewed
efforts at emancipation. And more than
once — ^all honour to the feelings of justice
and the sound common sense of those who
dared to utter such opinions — I was told by
Germans, in the middle of the war, and
with no attempt at concealment, that they
fully agreed it was an absolute necessity for
Russia to have the control of the only outlet
for her enormous trade to ^he Mediterranean,
and that commercially at any rate the fight
for Constantinople and the Straits was a
fight for a just cause.

Now, let us take these two points of
view together. From the purely German
standpoint, which is better ? — a victorious
and self-governing Turkey imbued with
jingoism and the desire for emancipation,
practically closed to us, even commercially,
or an amputated Turkey, compelled to
appeal for European help and European
capital to recover from her state of complete
exhaustion; a Turkey freed from those
Young Turkish jingoists who, in spite of
all their fine phrases and the German help
19

290 TWO WAR YEARS

they had to accept for all their inward dis-
taste of it, hate us from the very depths of
their heart ; a Turkey which, even if Russia,
— ^as a last resort ! — ^is allowed to become
mistress of the Dardanelles with huge
international guarantees, would, in the
Anatolia that is left to her, capable of
development as it is, and rich in national
wealth, offer a very considerable field of
activity for German enterprise ? The short-
sighted Pan-Germans, who are now fighting
for the victory of anti-foreign neo-Pan-
Turkism against the modern, civilised States
of the Entente, who had no wish at all that
Germany should not fare as weU as the rest
in the wide domains of Asiatic Turkey, can
perhaps answer my question. They should
have asked themselves this, and foreseen
the consequences before they yielded weakly
to Turkish caprices and themselves stirred
up the Turks against Europe.

As things stand now, however, the Ger-
man Government has thought fit, in her
blind belief in ultimate victory, to enter on
a formal treaty, guaranteeing the territorial
integrity of the Ottoman Empire, at a

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 291

point in the war when no reasonable being
even in Germany could possibly still believe
that a German victory would suffice to
protect Turkey after she has been solemnly
condemned by the Entente for her long list
of crimes. Germany has thus given a
negative answer to the question passed from
mouth to mouth in the international district
of Pera almost right from Turkey's entry
into the war : " Will Germany, if necessary,
sacrifice Constantinople and the Dardanelles,
if she can thus secure peace with Russia ? "
She had already given the answer " No "
before the absurd illusions of a possible
separate peace with Russia at this price
were finally and utterly dispelled by the
speech of the Russian Minister Trepoff, and
the purposeful and cruelly clear refusal of
Germany's offer of peace. These events and
the increasing excitement about the war
in Constantinople and elsewhere were not
required to show that in the Near East
as weU the fight must be fought " to the
bitter end."

Never, however — and that is German
World-politics, and the ethics of the World-

292 TWO WAR YEAHS

politician — ^have I ever heard a single one
of those Germans, who thought it an im-
possibility to sacrifice their ally Turkey in
order to gain the desired peace, put
forward as an argument for his opinion
the shame of a broken promise, but only
the consideration that German activity
in the lands of Islam, and particularly in
the valuable Near East, would be over and
done with for ever. I wonder if those who
have decided, with the phantom of a German-
Turkish victory ever before them, to go on
with the struggle on the side of Turkey
even after she had committed such abomin-
able crimes, and to drench Europe still further
with the blood of all the civilised nations
of the world, ever have any qualms as to
how much of their once brilliant possibilities
of commercial activity in Turkey, now so
lightly staked, would still exist were Turkey
victorious.

Luckily for mankind, that question need
not be answered. After the war, the huge
and flourishing trade of Southern Russia will
be carried down to the then open seaports
between Europe and Asia; the wealth of

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 293

Odessa and the Pontus ports, enormously
increased and free to develop, will be con-
centrated on the Bosporus and the Dar-
danelles, and the whole hitherto neglected
city of Constantinople, from Pera and Galata
to Stamboul and Scutari and Haidar-Pasha,
will become an earthly paradise of pulsing
life, well-being, and comfort. The luxury
and elegance of the Crimea will move
southwards to these shores of unique natural
beauty and mild climate which form the
bridge between two continents and between
two seas. Anyone who returns after a
decade of peaceful labour, .when the Old
World has recovered from its wounds, to
the Bosporus and the shores of the Sea of
Marmora, which he knew before the war,
under Turkish regime, will be astonished
at the marvellous changes which will then
have been wrought in that favoured corner
of the earth.

Never, even after another hundred years
of Turkish rule, would that unique coast
ever have become what it can be and what
it must be — one of the very greatest centres
of international intercourse and the Riviera

294 TWO WAR YEARS

of the East, not only in beauty of landscape,
but in luxury and wealth. The greatest
stress in this connection is to be laid on
the lively Russian impetus that will spring
from a modernised Russia, untrammelled
by restrictions in the Straits. Convinced
as I am that Russia after the war wUl no
longer be the Russia of to-day, so feared by
Germany, the Balkan States, and Turkey,
I am prepared to give this impetus full play,
as being the best possible means for the
further development of Constantinople.

In Asia Minor, from Brussa to the slopes
of the Taurus and the foot of the Armenian
mountains, there will extend a modem
Turkey which will finally have come to rest,
to concentration, to peaceful labour, after
centuries of conflict, despotic extortion, the
suicidal policy of military adventurers, and
superficial attempts at expansion coupled
with neglect of the most important internal
duties. The inhabitants of these lands will
soon have forgotten that " Greater Turkey "
has collapsed. They will be really happy
at last, these people whose idea of happiness
hitherto had been a veneer of material

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 295

well-being obtained by toadying, while the
great bulk of the Empire pined in dirt,
ignorance, and poverty, consumed by an
outworn militarism, oppressed by a decadent
administration. Then, but not till then,
the world will see what the Turkish people
is capable of. Then there wiU be no need
for pessimism about this kindly and honour-
able race. Then we can become honest
" Pro-Turks " again.

In Western Asia Minor, Europe will not
forget that the whole shore, where once
stood Troy, Ephesus, and Milet, is an out-and-
out Hellenic centre of civilisation. Quite
independently of all political feelings to-
wards present-day Greece, this historical
fact must be taken into consideration in
the final ruling. It is to be hoped that
the Greek people will not have to atone for
ever for the faults of their non-Greek king
who has forgotten that it is his sacred duty
to be a Greek and nothing but a Greek, and
who has betrayed the honour and the future
of the nation.

The Armenian mountain-land, laid waste
by war, and emptied of men by Talaat's

296 TWO WAR YEARS

passion for persecution, will obtain autonomy
from her conqueror, Russia, and will perhaps
be linked up with all the other parts of
the east, inhabited by the last remnants of
the Armenian people. Armenia, with its
central position and divided into three
among Turkey, Russia, and Persia, may
from its geographical position, its unfortun-
ate history, and the endless sufferings it
has been called upon to bear, be called the
Poland of Further Asia. Delivered from
the Turkish system, freed from all an-
tagonistic Turko-Russian military principles
of obstruction, linked up by railways to
the west as weU as the already well-
developed region of Transcaucasia, with a
big through trade from the Black Sea via
Trebizond to Persia and Mesopotamia, it
will once more offer an excellent field of
activity to the high intellectual and com-
mercial abilities of its people, now, alas !
scattered to the four winds of heaven.
But they will return to their old home,
bringing with them European ideas, Euro-
pean technique, and the most modern
methods from America.

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 297

If men are lacking, they can be obtained
from the near Caucasus with its narrow,
over-filled valleys, inhabited by a most
superior race of men, who have always
had strong emigrating instincts. Even this
most unfortunate country in the whole
world, which the Turks of the Old Regime
and of the New have systematically mutilated
and at last bequeathed to Russia with
practically not a man left, is going to have
its spring-time.

In the south. Great Arabia and Syria will
have autonomy under the protection of
England and France with their skilful Islam
policy; they will have the benefit of the
approved methods of progressive work in
Egypt, the Soudan, and India as weU as
the Atlas lands ; they will be exposed to
the influences and incitements of the rest
of civilised Europe? they wUl probably
be enriched with capital from America,
where thousands of Arab and Syrian, as
well as Armenian, refugees have found a
home; they will provide the first oppor-
tunity in history of showing how the Arab
race accommodates itself to modern civili-

298 TWO WAR YEARS

sation on its own ground and with its
own sovereign administration. The final
deliverance of the Arabs from the oppres-
sive and harmful supremacy of the Turks,
now happily accomplished by the war, was
one of the most urgent demands for a race
that can look back on centuries of brilliant
civilisation. The civilised world will watch
with the keenest interest the self-develop-
ment of the Arabian lands.

Even Germany, once she is at peace, will
have no need to grumble at these arrange-
ments, however diametrically opposed they
may be to the now sadly shattered plans
of the Pan-German and Expansion poli-
ticians. Germany will not lose the count-
less millions she has invested in Turkey.
She will have her full and sufficient share
in the European work and commercial
activity that will soon revive again in the
Near East. The Baghdad railway of
" Rohrbach & Company " will never be built,
it is true ; but the Baghdad Railway with
a loyal international marking off of the
different zones of interest, the Baghdad
Railway, as a huge artery of peaceful inter-

IN CONSTANTINOPLE 299

course linking up the whole of Asia Minor
and bringing peace and commercial pros-
perity, will all the more surely rise from
its ruins. And when once the German
Weltpolitik with its jealousy, its tactless,
sword-rattling interference in the time-
honoured vital interests of other States,
its political intrigues disguised in com-
mercial dress, is safely dead and buried,
there will be nothing whatever to hinder
Germany from making use of this railway
and carrying her purely commercial energy
and the products of her peaceful labour to
the shores of the Persian Gulf and receiving
in return the rich fruits of her cultural
activity on the soil of Asia Minor.

APPENDIX

For the better understanding of the fact that a
German journalist, the represaitative of a great
national paper like the Kblnische Zeitung, could
pubhsh such a book as this, and to ward off in ad-
vance all the furious personal attacks which will
result from its pubUcation, and which might, with-
out an explanation, injuriously affect its value as
an independent and uninfluenced document, it is,
I think, essential to explain the r61e 1 filled in
Constantinople, how I left Turkey, and how I came
to the decision to publish my experiences.

As far as my post on the Kolnische Zeitung is
concerned, I accepted it and went to Turkey
although I was from the very beginning against
German " World -poUtics," of the present-day
style at any rate (not against German conmiercial
and cultural activity in foreign countries), and
against mUitarism — as was only to be expected
from one who had studied colonial politics
and universal history unreservedly, and had
spent many years in the English, French, and
German colonies of Africa — and although I was
quite convinced that Germany's was the crime

301

302 APPENDIX

of setting the war in motion. Besides, my " anti-
militarism " is not of a dogmatic kind, but
refers merely to the relations customary between
civilised nations — witness the fact that I took part
in the Colonial War of 1904-6 in German South-
West Africa as a volunteer.

1 hoped to find in Turkey some satisfaction for
my extra-European leanings, a sphere of labour
less absorbed by German militarism, and oppor-
tunity for independent study, and surely no one
will take it amiss that I seized such a chance,
certainly unique in war-time, in spite of my
political views.

Once arrived in Turkey, I kept well in the back-
ground to begin with, so as to be able to form my
own opinion, of course doing my uttermost at the
same time to be loyal to the task I had undertaken.
In spite of everything I had to witness, it was quite
easy to reconcile all oppositions, until that famous
day when my wife denounced Germany to my face.
From that moment I became an enemy of present-
day Germany and began to think of one day
pubUshing the whole truth about the system.
Until then I had contented myself with never
saying a good word about the war, as one can
easily find for oneself from a perusal of my various
articles in the Kblnische Zeitung during 1915-16,
dated from Constantinople and marked with the
sign of a small steamship in^lieu of signature.

That dramatic event which finally alienated me
from the German cause took place just after the end

APPENDIX 303

of a severe crisis in my relationship with German-
Turkish Headquarters. Some sUght hints I had
given of Turkish mismanagement, cynicism, and
jingoism in a series of articles appearing from
February 15th, 1916, onwards, under the title
" Turkish Economic Problems," so far as they
were possible under existing censorship conditions,
was the occasion of the trouble. One can imagine
that Headquarters would certainly be furious with
a journalist whose articles appeared one fine day,
literally translated, in the Matin under the title :
" Situation insupportable en Turquie, dScrite par
un journaliste allemand" ("Insufferable situation
in Turkey, described by a German journalist "),
and cropped up once more on June 1st, in the
Journal des Balcans. 1 was three times over
threatened with dismissal. My paper sent a con-
fidential man to hold an inquiry, and after a month
he made a confidential report, which resulted in my
being allowed to remain. But the fact that the
same journahst that wrote such things was married
to a Czech was too much for my colleagues, who
were in part in the pay of the Embassy, in part
in the pay of the Young Turkish Committee, whose
politics they praised, regardless of their own in-
ward convictions, like the representative of the
Berliner Tageblatt, to get material benefit or
make sure of their own jobs. I gleaned many
hiunorous details at a nightly sitting of my Press
colleagues in Pera, at which I myself was branded
as a " dangerous character that must be got rid

304 APPENDIX

of," and my wife (who was far too young ever to
worry about politics) as a " Russian spy " — per-
haps because^ with the justifiable pride and reserve
of her race, she did not attempt to cultivate the
society of the German colony. That began the
period of intrigues and ill-will, but my enemies did
not succeed in damaging me, although matters went
so far as a denunciation of me before the " Preven-
tion of Espionage Department " of the General
Staff in Berlin. My paper, after they had given
me the fullest moral satisfaction, and had arranged
for me to remain in Constantinople in spite of all
that had taken place, thought it was better to
give me the chance of changing and offered me
a new post on the editorial staff elsewhere.

However, I was now quite finished with Germany,
or rather with its politics ; it would have been a
moral impossibility for me to write another single
word in the editorial line ; so I refused the offer
and applied for sick-leave from October 1st, 1916,
to the end of the war (by telegram about the middle
of August). It was granted me with an expres-
sion of regret.

Arrived in Switzerland (February 7th, 1917),
I severed all connection with my pap6r by mutual
consent from October 1st, 1916, onwards. After
my resignation, no special editorial representative
of the Kolnische Zeitung was appointed to take my
place, as the censorship made any kind of satis-
factory work impossible,

I should like to emphasise the fact that the

APPENDIX 305

intrigues against me, the crisis with Headquarters
I have just mentioned, and my departiure from
Constantinople did not injure me in any way
either morally or financially, and have nothing
whatever to do with the present publication. It
is certainly not any petty annoyance that could
bring me to such an action, for it will probably
entail more than enough unpleasant consequences
for me. The reproaches levelled against me by
my pushing, jingoistic colleagues were as impotent
as their attempts to get rid of me as " dangerous
to the German Cause " ; I have written proof of
this from my paper in my hand, and also of the
fact that it was of my own free-will that I retired.
I can therefore look forward quite calmly to all
the personal invective that is sure to be showered
on me for political reasons.

I had sufficient independent means not to feel
the loss of my post in Constantinople too keenly ;
and if I still kept my post after the beginning of
the crisis with Headquarters, it was simply and
solely that as a newspaper correspondent I might
be in possession of fuller information, and able to
follow up as long as possible the developments that
were taking place on that most interesting soil of
Turkey. When that was no longer possible, I
refused the post offered me in Cologne — in fact
twice, once by letter and once by telegram — for I
could not pretend to opinions I directly opposed.
I therefore remained at my own expense in the
Turkish capital. I was extremely glad that the

20

306 APPENDIX

difference of opinion ended as it did, for I had at
last a free hand to say and write what I thought
and felt.

My stay in Constantinople for a further three
months as a silent observer naturally did not
escape the notice of the German authorities, and
after they had reported to the Foreign Office that
a " satisfactory co-operation between me and the
German representatives was no longer possible,"
they had of course to discover some excuse for
putting an end to my prolonged stay in Turkey.
They finally attempted to get rid of me by calling
me up for military duty again. But this was
useless in my case, for my health had been badly
shaken by my spell at the Front at the beginning
of the war, and besides I had the doctor's word for
it that I should never be able to stand the German
climate after having lived so long in the Tropics.

Whether they liked it or not, the authorities
had to find some other means of getting me out of
Constantinople. The Consul-General approached
me, after he had discussed the matter with the
Ambassador, to see if I would not like to go to
Switzerland to get properly cured ; otherwise he
was sure I would be turned out by the Turks.
They were evidently afraid, for I was getting more
and more into bad odour with the German authori-
ties for my ill-concealed opinions, that I would
publish my impressions, with documentary sup-
port, as soon as ever there was a change of govern-
ment in Turkey, or as soon as the German censor-

APPENDIX 307

ship was removed and anything of the kind was
possible. They apparently thought that the
frontier regulations would be quite sufficient to
prevent my taking any documentary evidence
with me to Switzerland.

As a matter of fact this was the case, and the
day before my departure from Constantinople I
carefully burned the whole of my many notes,
which would have produced a much more effective
indictment against the moral sordidness of the
German- Young Turkish system than these very
general sketches. But the strictest frontier regula-
tions could not prevent me from taking with me,
free of all censorship, the impressions I had received
in Turkey, and the opinions I had arrived at after
a painful battle for loyalty to myself as a German
and to the duties I had undertaken. Even then
I had considerable difficulty in getting across the
frontier, and I had to wait seventeen whole days
at the frontier before I was finally allowed into
Switzerland. It was only owing to the fact that
I sent a telegram to the Chancellor, on the authority
of the Consul-General in Constantinople, begging
that no difficulties of a political kind might be
placed in the way of my going to Switzerland, as
I had been permitted to do so by medical certificate,
the passport authorities and the local command,
that I finally won my point with the frontier
authorities and was permitted to cross into Switzer-
land.

To tell the truth, I must admit that the high

308 APPENDIX

civil authorities, and particularly the Foreign
Office, treated me throughout most kindly and
courteously. For this one reason I had a hard
fight with myself, right up to the very last, even
after I arrived in Switzerland, before I sat down
and wrote out my impressions and opinions of
German-Turkish politics. And if I have now
finally decided to make them public, I can only do
so with an expression of the most honest regret
that my private and political conscience has not
allowed me to requite the kindness of the authorities
by keeping silent about what I saw of the German
and Turkish system.

Printed in Oreat Britain if BauU, Watton t Vintf, Li.,
London and AyleAvry.